Kant's Legacy and the Idea of a Transitional Jus Cosmopoliticum

• Author: Claudio Corradetti
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/raju.12116
• Date: 01 March 2016
• Published date: 01 March 2016

NOTES • DISCUSSIONS • BOOK REVIEWS

Kant’s Legacy and the Idea

of a Transitional Jus Cosmopoliticum

CLAUDIO CORRADETTI*

[...] just as individuals unite in a civil state, so these warring states must unite in a state of

nations, in which their conflicts will be decided in accordance with positive laws. —This,

anyway, is the decision of pure reason, and the federation of nations [V€

olkerbund] proposed

by Kant for the preservation of peace is no more than an intermediary condition [...]. (Fichte

2001, 319; italics added)

1. Kant’s Cosmopolitan Rationale: A Transitional Reading

At the end of the eighteenth century, when Kant elaborated his major political writ-

ings, not many would have thought of history as a cosmopolitan project. Kant

(2009, 9–23), however, dedicated nine propositions to elucidate his views in the

“Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim.” Skepticism in this respect

is referred to with the Abb

e de St. Pierre’s and Rousseau’s “ridiculed” cosmopoli-

tanism “because they believed its execution was too near” (ibid., 17), so that

“universal world history,” says Kant, should rather be understood in terms of “a

regular course of improvement of state constitutions” (ibid., 21).

1

For Kant the

* Earlier versions were presented at the Prague Conference on Philosophy and Social Science,

22–25 May 2014; at theNordic Network in Political Theory, Oslo, 2 November 2013; andat the

Conference Transitional Cosmopolitanism, Oslo, 3–4 March2014. For comments and suggestionsI

would like to thank A. Wood for guidance on crucial paragraphs, as well as F. Zaumseil,

S. Baiasu, M. Kumm,A. Ferrara, S. Langvatn, H. Williams,R. Maliks, A. Føllesdal, G. Cesarale,

and H. Pedersen. Any remaining errors are mine. Thisarticle is prepared under the auspices of

MultiRights, European Research Council Advanced Grant #269841 at the University of Oslo,

Norway.

1

On the relation between Kant’s “theoretical” and “practical” thesis of the philosophy of his-

tory that is also reflected in the role of the progression toward perpetual peace, Wood (2006,

254ff.) observes: “It is important to distinguish between two quite different (and largely inde-

pendent) thesesthat Kant maintains here. The first thesis [...] is a whollytheoretical one: under

the guidance of heuristic or regulativeprinciples of reason, we should attempt to make sense of

human history as a process involving an unconscious and unintended teleology of nature [...]

whose ends [...] also include the creation of a perfectly just civil constitution and a peaceful

internationalorder among states. [...] A second thesis[...] is a practicalor moral one: As human

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Ratio Juris. Vol. 29 No. 1 March 2016 (105–121)

cosmopolitan ideal represents a long-term project. This is due to the fact that he

not only thinks that it is contradictory to “justify an offensive war” (Kant 2012a,

8:355, 103)

2

by recourse to principles of law, but also because “what applies under

natural law to human beings in the lawless condition [...] cannot also apply to

states under international right (since, as states, they already have an internal legal

constitution and have thus outgrown the coercion by which others subject them to

a broader legal constitution” (Kant 2006b, 8:355, 80). It is by attempting to solve

this conundrum that the hypothesis of a “transitional” interpretation of Kant’s cos-

mopolitanism gains legitimacy. However, even though there are already some

“transitional” interpretations of Kant, a question remains with regard to what

might have been the most legitimate transnational arena compatible with Kant’s

notion of state sovereignty.

3

In the following sections, I will therefore defend the idea that Kant’s argument

relies on a distinct view for the “transitional” character of cosmopolitan law which

defines a normative space that avoids the danger of a world state. According to

this suggested interpretation, the relation between cosmopolitan law and its institu-

tional instantiations is explained by the function the former plays as a “freedom

generating” advancement. Among those most relevant to the argument I offer here,

both Kleingeld and Brown are worth mentioning. However, my interpretation dif-

fers from theirs in important ways. Whereas Kleingeld attributes to Kant’s change

of mind the institutional shift from a weak noncoercive league to a coercive state of

states, and Brown emphasizes the practical implementation of cosmopolitan law as

a form of legal transition, I will attempt to reconstruct and explain how the multi-

ple institutional entities Kant refers to are to be considered parts of a single pattern.

This hypothesis justifies the idea of an inherent transitional character of transna-

tional improvements brought about by cosmopolitan right.

4

This is also the pattern toward the achievement of international peace as a solu-

tion to conflict through legal means. What is most important here is that such a

condition embeds not only a trajectory of progressively legally binding configura-

tions beyond the state, but also a form of synchronic transitionality whereby func-

tional differentiation does not raise uncontestable and conclusive claims of

beings, we have a dutyto work together toward devising and realizing the end of a perfect civil

constitutionadministering justice among human beings, and to this end we are also requiredto

seek an order guaranteeing peace among states [...] The first (theoretical) thesis is in no way

dependent on the second (practical or moral) thesis. [...] Yet there is one connection between

Kant’s theoretical theses about history and his practical ones. [...] The fact that, according to a

teleologicallyconceived theoretical philosophyof history, a natural purposiveness leadstoward

an ideal civilconstitution and toward perpetualpeace between nations—andeven more, the fac-

tual reasons why it does so—constitutes part of the reason why we have a moral duty to place

an ideal civilconstitution and perpetualpeace among the ends of our action.”

2

In the same paragraph Kant defines Grotius, Pufendorf, and Vattel as “sorry comforters.” On

the role that morality plays in Kant in maintaining “the possibility of peace,” see Capps 2011,

88ff.

3

Certainly Fichte in the epigraph could be mentioned as the first to suggest a “transitional”

interpretationof Kant. For contemporary approachesto Kant’s cosmopolitanism, see also Klein-

geld 2012, 7ff.,and Brown 2008, 430. For a “transitional”interpretation of Kant more focusedon

the contemporarylegal understanding,see Niesen 2014.

4

See, in particularKleingeld 2006, 7, and Brown 2008, 430ff.For the notion of Verkehr see Kant

2006c, 6:352,146.

106 Claudio Corradetti

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