Kantian Cosmopolitanism Research Articles

Kantian Cosmopolitanism and the Challenge of its Racist Prejudices

In the years 1788, Kant develops a conception of racial inequality in which he not only affirms the superiority of the « European » white race over other races, but also appears to approve of the enslavement of Black people. Kant’s theory of racial inequality baffles many, considering that in the moral philosophy he develops during the same period, he makes no compromises on the inviolability of human dignity. The aim of this text is not to deny Kant’s racism between 1764 and 1790, which is evident in his courses on physical geography and anthropology, but rather to demonstrate that Kant’s primary objective, which he never loses sight of in his various writings on race, is to explain the unity in diversity of the human species. While Kant’s theory of racial inequalities leaves no doubt about his racism between 1764 and 1790, it is inaccurate to claim that he remained constant in his views on non-European peoples. From 1795 onwards, in the Project for a Perpetual Peace and later in The Metaphysics of Morals (1797), Kant reevaluates his appreciation of non-European peoples, develops a more egalitarian conception of rights and race, and condemns European colonization.

New imperialisms in the making? The geo-political economy of transnational higher education mobility in the UK and China

Higher education (HE) mobility programmes around the globe have been key initiatives over the past thirty years, driven by combinations of supranational and national state-led knowledge economy policies, university strategies, and decisions made by individuals regarding employability, credentials, or academic tourism. In this paper we argue that mobility too often is understood through the prism of internationalism, itself umbilically tied to and nourished by Enlightenment liberal thinking, such as Kantian cosmopolitanism, and the romantic figure of the wandering scholar. This has the effect of reducing our understanding of transnational mobility to individual actors, their desires, and experiences. In this paper we ask: to what extent and in what ways can HE transnational mobility projects be understood as forms of imperialism? In this regard we examine the literature on imperialism and argue for a more capacious use of the term; as taking economic, political and cultural forms. We use these to examine the links between the expansion and securing of empires historically, the state’s spatial projects and global market making. We do this through the prism of two nations, the UK and China, comparing their state’s transnational HE strategies, selectivities and outcomes.

Kantian Ethics Towards A Justifiable Business And Trade Practices: Envisaging A Humanitarian Society

The Kantian code of ethics is guided by pure practical reason and since reason is consistent and permits no exceptions to favor the lawmaker or its adherent, the moral law is also consistent and inflexible. This nature of the law is very significant for trade as trade norms cannot be flexed to favor a particular nation or company. This paper believes that Kantian cosmopolitanism should be the credo of business and trade. The reason for this assertion is because the ultimate goal of humanity is a prosperous living of all people in a spirit of unity. Humanity is at its best when rising above the barriers of race, caste and creed. And Kant's ethics has always recommended a path for humanity that leads to this cohesion. Ethical commonwealth, cosmopolitanism, League of Nations and Kingdom of ends have in themselves this one-point agenda to envisage a humanitarian society that takes pride in peaceable solidarity of human existence.

Investigations of Kantian Cosmopolitanism: Evolution of the Species, Sovereignty and Hospitality

ABSTRACT The article investigates Kantian cosmopolitanism, based on the philosopher’s works and his main commentators. The study chooses and highlights three central and specific themes: the evolution of the human species, the dilemma between sovereignty and cosmopolitanism, and the issue of hospitality. By casting light on these themes, the article attempts to fill in a gap in specialized literature from the fields of international relations and philosophy. Regarding the evolution of the human species, I emphasize the philosopher’s understanding of “unsociable sociability“ – a natural mechanism which provides the elementary basis for the advent of cosmopolitanism and perpetual peace. The dilemma between sovereignty and cosmopolitanism leads to the significant analysis of whether Kant has reflected upon or proposed transcending the paradigm of classical sovereignty. Finally, the discussion about hospitality becomes particularly relevant, and is scrutinized according to its juridical and ethical.

The contents and contours of contemporary cosmopolitan constitution-making: Immanuel Kant in the twenty-first century

Abstract:This article articulates legal and practical discourse that seek to apply and extend the classic cosmopolitan ideals of Immanuel Kant to the evolving practice and reality of the twenty-first century. It identifies five major strands through which cosmopolitan law ideals express themselves in contemporary constitution-making, forming in turn the major composite cosmopolitan contents. In some sense, the proposed framework re-imagines Kant in the twenty-first century, mirroring a conjoined classic and contemporaneous concept of cosmopolitan constitution-making. Kantian cosmopolitanism is reinterpreted by way of conjoining the classic cosmopolitan moral and normative principles of universal freedom, human worth and global justice to emerging and actual contemporaneous constitution-making trends such as using international or comparative foreign models as a basis for constitutional design, using international law and foreign domestic law in national constitutional interpretation, or using regional or international bodies of adjudication and their jurisprudence as a constitutionally mandated source of law. The outlined framework seeks to transcend the occasional historical setbacks and sceptical objections to cosmopolitanism, while admitting their continuous, albeit gradually unobtrusive presence. This framework is naturally predisposed to be deferential to a bold imaginative project, such as the one embodied in the Kantian vision of cosmopolitanism, which is both rooted in and survived the historical forces that ran contrary to the cosmopolitan ideals, to reach a point of its ever closer materialisation.

Relationship between the Concept “Publicity” in the Kantian Cosmopolitanism and Business Ethics

Relationship between the Concept “Publicity” in the Kantian Cosmopolitanism and Business Ethics

World Citizenship and Weltliteratur: Revisiting the Origins of Comparative Literature

The main goal of this article is to reunite the concepts of Weltliteratur and Weltburgertum in order to propose new foundations in the revision of the origins of Comparative Literature and the present need for it. The relationship between Kantian Cosmopolitanism, Herderian Universalism, and the Goethian idea of Weltliteratur must be read again not only as a background of the current debates on Globalization and Literature as the frame of a new Comparative Literature, but also as an appreciation of Goethe’s ideals as a late intervention in the Kant-Herder debate, a proposal in the emergence of national literature in the nineteenth century, and an attempt to create a new cultural frame: European literature. In this sense, the article highlights Goethe as reader of the French journal Le Globe in order to review the origins of Weltliteratur and the meaning of Europe in Goethe’s later work.

Transformation of the Political Theory: Cosmopolitan Citizenship and Democracy

This paper is concerned with the topic of cosmopolitan citizenship and its relation to democracy. We begin by highlighting the main postulates of Kantian cosmopolitanism, as many theorists Kant contributes an idea of cosmopolitan citizenship linked to the need to establish international political institutions that support citizenship beyond an exclusively moral dimension. We then discuss the issue of the transformation undergone by the nation state in the context of globalization, particularly the loss of sovereignty of the state and the growth of multinational companies, and how these changes have come to set a new scenario for the emergence of international actors and the basis for various citizenship practices in a cosmopolitan dimension. The nature and current reach of cosmopolitan citizenship is explored through two fundamental cases: the European Union, and ecologic citizenship. Finally, we discuss cosmopolitan democracy and which ought to be its characteristics, among which we identify the establishment of supranational political institutions, the consolidation of a global civil society, and the establishment of mechanisms for citizen participation beyond the traditional ones situated in the national sphere.

Cosmopolitan Risk, Neoliberal Un-Freedom: Transparency and Responsibility in John LeCarré’s The Constant Gardener

At the heart of both Kantian cosmopolitanism and liberal capitalism is the belief that they offer the best option for freedom from parochial curtailments of safety and liberty. On the one hand, a cosmopolitan federation of states provides the best option for freeing Europe (and, thus, the argument claims, the globe) from the violence that follows national affiliations and sovereignty. On the other hand, laissez-faire economics best ensures individual autonomy and freedom. While one focuses on the universal and the other on the individual, both understand freedom as best emerging from the disappearance of the nation-state. But, alongside both notions of freedom, cosmopolitanism and liberal capitalism both displace risk, by either attempting to eliminate it altogether in global geopolitical harmony or limiting it to an expression of personal decision-making and enterprise. As a result, the risks that accompany the expansion and operation of contemporary global capital tend to have no way to be expressed outside of historically familiar and paternalist colonial language of civilization and personal responsibility. This paper examines how John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardener provides a way to think about globalized risk and responsibility outside of the limitations of cosmopolitan and capitalist discourses by making visible the differential costs both cosmopolitanism and capitalism impose on bodies and places. I argue that the novel uses explicitly cosmopolitan rhetoric of global ethical and political responsibility to critique the self-centered entrepreneurial rationalism of contemporary neoliberalism and its implications for thinking about risk in a transnational context.

From the Positivist Concept of Sovereignty to Kantian Cosmopolitanism - Limits and Possibility of State-Sovereignty in the European Union -

From the Positivist Concept of Sovereignty to Kantian Cosmopolitanism - Limits and Possibility of State-Sovereignty in the European Union -

Perpetual Peace and Cosmopolitical Method

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.

Can Non‐Europeans Philosophize? Transnational Literacy and Planetary Ethics in a Global Age

Defenders of the Enlightenment highlight the long neglected anticolonial writings of thinkers like Immanuel Kant, which serve as a corrective to the misrepresentation of the Enlightenment's epistemological investment in imperialism. One of the most pervasive repercussions of the claim that the Enlightenment was always already anti‐imperial is that postcolonial critique is rendered redundant, and the project of decolonizing European philosophy becomes unnecessary. Contesting the exoneration of Enlightenment philosophers of racism and sexism, this article debunks the claim that Kantian cosmopolitanism was an antidote to colonialism. Addressing the ambivalent legacies of the European Enlightenment for the postcolonial world, with special focus on the “Syrian refugee crisis,” the article examines the enduring normative violence exerted by Enlightenment principles of cosmopolitanism and outlines the contested terrains that inflect current geopolitics of knowledge‐production. Given that the normative idea of philosophy, as defined during the Enlightenment, continues to delegitimize non‐European perspectives, the integration of previously marginalized knowledges into the philosophical canon is insufficient; rather, in order to desubalternize non‐Western epistemologies, it is imperative to undo the uneven distribution of epistemic agency globally. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak's ideas of transnational literacy and planetary ethics, the article concludes by underscoring the contribution of postcolonial‐feminist critique in imagining postimperial philosophy in a global age.

Modern Korea and the Horizon of Expectations for ‘Eternal Peace’ ―The Japanese Imperialist Project and the Ideal of Kantian Cosmopolitanism―

Modern Korea and the Horizon of Expectations for ‘Eternal Peace’ ―The Japanese Imperialist Project and the Ideal of Kantian Cosmopolitanism―

At Land's End: Novel Spaces and the Limits of Planetarity

This essay contends that planetarity may be insufficiently divorced from globalization—its putative opposite—to provide a critical lens for understanding and countering its effects: specifically, anthropogenic climate change and global economic inequality. The argument begins by documenting the affinities between planetarity's redemptive, world-building ambitions, on one hand, and both Kantian cosmopolitanism and turn-of-the-twentieth-century articulations of “planetary consciousness” (as particularly evident in speculative fiction) on the other. The common denominator of these discourses (explicit in the earlier texts, oblique in the later ones) is a logic of global improvement, control, and growth precipitated by an existential threat. In both H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds and Dipesh Chakrabarty's seminal “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” for instance, a suddenly changed Earth galvanizes humanity into collective existence, converting discrete individuals into a species aligned, paradoxically, both with and against the planet. The essay then considers the violent histories associated with such attempts to meet global problems with global solutions, asserting that the difficulty inheres in the planetary scale itself. Concluding that all contemporary planetarities—like their early twentieth-century equivalents—are at least partly attempts to remake the world in our preferred image, the argument closes by considering a humbler alternative inspired by fleeting moments in Jack London's socialist fiction: a general strike that would withdraw our maintenance of the world in favor of more plural and livable affiliations; a nonapocalyptic end to the world that might offer a means of surviving the Anthropocene.

Problems of Cosmopolitanism and Alternativeness in the History of Central Asia

We residents of Samarkand and Bukhara, throughout history aimed to accumulate traditions of challenging the established (often elitist) limits of local culture, economics and history. The cities communities were under constant pressure of the dichotomy between the notions of nomadism and sedentism, Turkic and Persian speakers. Many community-based units of Samarkand had their own commercial, socio-cultural and educational networks that preserved alternativeness within the life cycle, which balanced between universality and particularism. These lands were dominated by a unique parity, based on Sufi ethics, which designed not syncretic cosmopolitism, but rather introduced the recognition of alternativeness that took into account both similar and diverse waves of ideas. Based on this vision, the author aims to diminish Kantian cosmopolitanism to a level of Euro-American and illustrate the view of cosmopolitanism through a dialogic platform, precisely including its links with the Central Asian versions. Moreover, one cannot identify local cosmopolitanism with the ideas of European Enlightenment, namely individualism and universalism on a global scale. Due to the alternativeness and cosmopolitanism, as well as lack of radical individualism within the local communities, there was no monocultural view on life, since both science and morality (religion, culture, and community) were mutually essential. Nonetheless, present proves that these fields remain their equal vitality to an individual who is capable of simultaneously possessing knowledge about the reality and receiving satisfaction from the reality. This constant motion based on reciprocation was maintained in the ancient culture of Samarkand by two factors: cosmopolitanism and alternativeness.

A modest proposal: comments on Burke’s security cosmopolitanism

This piece argues while that Burke’s Security Cosmopolitanism puts forward a compelling and persuasive argument on the ethics of security, its potential is not realizable within the frame of moral cosmopolitanism. I argue that Kantian cosmopolitanism should be understood not as a new and transformative framework for ethical security studies, but as the defining framework of the post-colonial international system. My own more modest approach to ethical security argues for careful attention to life-sustaining relations and practices of care, and to the wider norms and structures that constrain and limit the ability of households and communities to address insecurities through care.

Kantian cosmopolitanism and its limits

The cosmopolitanism of the European Enlightenment was mostly a limited matter of a Eurocentric anti-nationalism promoting the ideal of Europe as an harmonious system of balancing states. Against this background, Kant’s cosmopolitan vision stands out as more inclusive because, far from restricting its concerns to Europe, it proposes to bring all of humanity together by locating its different sections in a developmental framework that runs from the most primitive of human conditions to the fullest development of Man’s moral and intellectual capacities. Like the developmental schema posited by Voltaire and the Scottish Enlightenment, this vision locates most of humanity at some distance behind Western Europe. It produces the appearance of a cosmopolitan inclusiveness by means of an equally cosmopolitan differentiation.

Cosmopolitanism and Working-through the Past

Certain of Kant’s political essays suggest that the project of socio-political emancipation should be seen as a process of working ourselves out of affective attachments to pathological social relations. This aspect of Kant’s thinking is read through Marx’s materialist notion of commodity fetishism, which provides a paradigmatic approach to understanding the ways in which concrete forms of sociality either thwart or facilitate the process of emancipation. It is then suggested that Freud’s notion of the work of mourning can help to clarify the possibility of breaking with the fixated attachments that contribute to our own domination. In this light, the author considers the respective accounts of the relationship between Freudian theory and Kantian cosmopolitanism given by Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler in light of Theodor Adorno’s materialist account of working-through the past. Reading Freud with Adorno offers a more coherent clarification of the concrete conditions of possibility of cosmopolitanism.

Global age cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism suggests world citizenship, an idea that developed through several different historical phases. Three of these historical phases are considered in this document. The first two, Stoic cosmopolitanism (SC) and Kantian cosmopolitanism (KC) are primarily philosophical. The third, global age cosmopolitanism (GAC), is primarily socioeconomic and political, although it includes philosophical elements. Throughout this paper, the theoretical principles concerned with GAC will be discussed, however, it is important to first review its historical roots in SC and KC. The analysis also considers the relation of GAC to business ethics practice and business ethics education. Cosmopolitanism in the global age is different from the Stoic and Kantian cosmopolitanisms that have been endorsed by history. Although early business ethics literature and practice implied a lax or limited cosmopolitanism, today they must account for global institutions and rules that did not exist even 50 years ago, but which now regulate the international economy.

Perpetual what? Injury, Sovereignty and a Cosmopolitan View of Immigration

Can Kantian cosmopolitanism contribute to normative approaches to immigration? Kant developed the universal right to hospitality in the context of late eighteenth-century colonialism. He claimed that non-European countries had a sovereign right over their territory and the conditions of foreigners' visits. This sovereign prerogative limited visitors' right to hospitality. The interconnected and complementary system of right he devised is influential today, but this article argues that maintaining the complementarity of the three realms involves reconsidering its application to contemporary immigration. It situates Kant's Perpetual Peace within the context of debates about conquest and colonialism and argues that Kant's strict conception of sovereignty is justified by his concern in maintaining a realm of sovereignty that is complementary with cosmopolitanism and his prioritization of mutual agreements in each of the realms, particularly in a context of international power asymmetry. In Kant's time, European powers appropriated cosmopolitan discourses to defend their right to visit other countries and it was necessary to strengthen non-Europeans' sovereign claims. The strength and hostility of the visitors made limited hospitality and strong sovereignty act in tandem to keep away conquerors, expanding cosmopolitanism. Today, individuals from poor countries migrate to wealthier ones where they are subject to a sovereign authority that excludes them. Sovereignty and cosmopolitanism no longer work complementarily, but rather strengthen powerful state actors vis-à-vis non-citizens subject to unilateral rule. Maintaining the pre-eminence of the right to freedom, the article suggests that only through the creation of ‘cosmopolitan spaces' of politics can we reproduce today the complementarity that Kant envisioned.