This is the first comprehensive account of Kant's cosmopolitanism, highlighting its moral, political, legal, economic, cultural and psychological aspects. Contrasting Kant's views with those of his German contemporaries and relating them to current debates, Pauline Kleingeld sheds new light on texts that have been hitherto neglected or underestimated. In clear and carefully argued discussions, she shows that Kant's philosophical cosmopolitanism underwent a radical transformation in the mid 1790s and that the resulting theory is philosophically stronger than is usually thought. Using the work of figures such as Fichte, Cloots, Forster, Hegewisch, Wieland and Novalis, Kleingeld analyses Kant's arguments regarding the relationship between cosmopolitanism and patriotism, the importance of states, the ideal of an international federation, cultural pluralism, race, global economic justice and the psychological feasibility of the cosmopolitan ideal. In doing so, she reveals a broad spectrum of positions in cosmopolitan theory that are relevant to current discussions of cosmopolitanism.

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This book examines the history of cosmopolitanism from its origins in the ancient world up to its use in Kantian political philosophy. Taking the idea of ‘common property of the land’ as a starting point, the author makes the original case that attention to this concept is needed to properly understand the notion of cosmopolitan citizenship. Offering a reconstruction of cosmopolitanism from an interdisciplinary point of view, Toward Kantian Cosmopolitanism shows how the concept sits at the intersection between philosophical debates, legal realities and the origins of the construction of the discipline of international law. Essential reading for all researchers and advances students of cosmopolitanism, political philosophy and the history of international law, it broadens the current understanding of the concept of cosmopolitanism and reflects on cosmopolitan studies from a historical and philosophical point of view.

Advances normative notion of transnational cosmopolitanism based on Du Bois's writings and practice, and discusses limitations of Kantian cosmopolitanism.

This volume explores Kant's cosmopolitanism and its implications for a Kantian-inspired cosmopolitics. The contributors provide a definitive source and specification of key new areas in the field of Kantian cosmopolitanism and how it is integral to current debates in political theory, political philosophy and international relations.

This book argues that to understand the complexities of our current legal-institutional arrangements, we first need an insight into Kant's global politics, and highlights the potential fruitfulness of Kant's cosmopolitan thought for contemporary political thinking.

The authors argue for the continued theoretical and practical relevance of the cosmopolitan ideals of Kant's essay "Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch."

Why does Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) consistently invoke God and Providence in his most prominent texts relating to international politics? In this wide-ranging study, Seán Molloy proposes that texts such as Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent and Toward Perpetual Peace cannot be fully understood without reference to Kant’s wider philosophical projects, and in particular the role that belief in God plays within critical philosophy and Kant’s inquiries into anthropology, politics, and theology. Molloy’s broader view reveals the political-theological dimensions of Kant’s thought as directly related to his attempts to find a new basis for metaphysics in the sacrifice of knowledge to make room for faith.This book is certain to generate controversy. Kant is hailed as “the greatest of all theorists” in the field of International Relations (IR); in particular, he has been acknowledged as the forefather of Cosmopolitanism and Democratic Peace Theory. Yet, Molloy charges that this understanding of Kant is based on misinterpretation, neglect of particular texts, and failure to recognize Kant’s ambivalences and ambiguities. Molloy’s return to Kant’s texts forces devotees of Cosmopolitanism and other ‘Kantian’ schools of thought in IR to critically assess their relationship with their supposed forebear: ultimately, they will be compelled to seek different philosophical origins or to find some way to accommodate the complexity and the decisively nonsecular aspects of Kant’s ideas.

The essays in this volume discuss the questions at the core of Kant's pioneering work in the philosophy of history.

This book proposes an account of the place of the theory of race in Kant’s thought as a central part of philosophical anthropology in his political system. Kant’s theory of race, this book argues, is integral to the analysis of the “Charakteristik” of the human species and determined by human natural predispositions. The understanding of his theory as such suggests not only an alternative reading to the orthodox narrative we have seen so far but also reveals the underlying centrality of the notion of human natural predispositions in a way that is consequential for Kant’s philosophy as a whole. What is the impact of Kant’s racial theory on his philosophy and political thought? Is Kant a consistent egalitarian or a partisan Universalist thinker? Is he the symbol of racist prejudices of his time? What is the influence of his racial hierarchy on his cosmopolitan right? Or more simply, is Kant racist? From a systematic examination of Kant relevant writings, this book provides answers to these questions and shed light on two fundamental problems of his theory of race for moral philosophy, namely: (1) the completeness of the character of the White race and (2) the dispossession of the character of the beauty and the dignity of human nature of the Negro race. These two issues, unperceived from the “orthodox” reading’s perspective, however, uncovered by the “heterodox” reading, not only shape Kant’s race thinking from the beginning to the end of his life, transform his cosmopolitan right into a non-universalist form of right, but merely define Kant as a fundamental racist thinker since he developed the anthropology, the philosophy, and the politics of racism in a systematic way.