Kant and Cosmopolitanism
The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship

First comprehensive account of Kant's cosmopolitanism, offering a novel interpretation of eighteenth-century and current philosophical discussions.

Pauline Kleingeld (Author)

9781107654112, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 November 2013

232 pages
23 x 15.1 x 1.3 cm, 0.35 kg

'In this careful and insightful book, Pauline Kleingeld reconstructs Kant's cosmopolitanism, placing him in dialogue with historical contemporaries (including Christoph Wieland, Anacharsis Cloots, Georg Forster, Dietrich Hegewisch, and Novalis), and with several present-day thinkers (John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, and Thomas Pogge). The result is an extremely clear and engaging work, one that manages to add something both to our understanding of Kant and to our understanding of what a 'cosmopolitan' political theory should look like today … This book deserves a wide audience for its fine reconstruction of Kant's views on international justice.' Anna Stilz, Social Theory and Practice

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.

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. World citizens in their own country: Wieland and Kant on moral cosmopolitanism and patriotism
2. Universal republic of world citizens or international federation?: Cloots and Kant on global peace
3. Global hospitality: Kant's concept of cosmopolitan right
4. Hierarchy or diversity?: Forster and Kant on race, culture, and cosmopolitanism
5. International trade and justice: Hegewisch and Kant on cosmopolitanism and globalization
6. Cosmopolitanism and feeling: Novalis and Kant on the development of a universal human community
7. Kant's cosmopolitanism and current philosophical debates
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: c 1600 to c 1900 [HPCD]