"What Kant would have said in the refugee crisis"

Kant's understanding of Cosmopolitan Right, elaborated in the Third Article of his essay on "Perpetual Peace" and The Metaphysics of Morals, enjoys considerable attention today under the current conditions of the refugee crisis and globalization. Geneva Convention's principle of "non¬refoulement" concerning the Status of Refugees mainly relies on Kant's claim that first entry should always be granted to those who are in danger. The paper will focus first on the distinction Kant makes between "the right to be a permanent visitor" and the "temporary right of sojourn." Though the Kantian hospitality "is not a question of philanthropy but of right," yet it is confined to a claim to temporary residency.

Kantian Review, 1998

Kant's unduly neglected concept of cosmopolitan law suggests a third sphere of public law -- in addition to constitutional law and international law -- in which both states and individuals have rights, and where individuals have these rights as ‛citizens of the earth' rather than as citizens of particular states. I critically examine Kant's view of cosmopolitan law, discussing its addressees, content, justification, and institutionalization. I argue that Kant's conception of ‛world citizenship' is neither merely metaphorical nor dependent on an ideal of a world-government. Kant's views are particularly relevant in light of recent shifts in international law, shifts that lead away from the view that individuals can only be subjects of international law insofar as they are citizens of particular states. Thereby, a category of rights has emerged that comes close to what Kant understands by cosmopolitan law.

Global Constitutionalism, 2020

In A Cosmopolitan Legal Order: Kant, Constitutional Justice and the European Convention on Human Rights, Alec Stone Sweet and Clare Ryan argue that there has been the emergence of, and increasing prospects for, a cosmopolitan legal order based on the Convention. This symposium aims to engage with, and to better explore, the theoretical implications and practical legal ramifications of their argument. In doing so, this first article acts as a general introduction to the symposium, laying out the major arguments of the book as well as arguments presented by the symposium contributors. Moving beyond the summative, this introduction also situates A Cosmopolitan Legal Oder within broader debates in global constitutionalism, while defending its use of Kant’s cosmopolitan theory. Lastly, it explores some of the key implications and challenges that arise from the symposium itself, rooting these insights within the current context of anti-globalism, nationalism, populism and neo-sovereigntis...

Freiheit als Rechtsbegriff, edited by Matthias Kaufmannn and Joachim Renzikowski , 2016

Revue Française de Science Politique (in English), 2014

This paper argues whether Kant could be regarded as a meaningful advocate of global justice or only as a valid theorist of justice within the specific context of the Westphalian Europe. This alternative should be easily solved as far as Kant asserts that the state and republican form ought to be spread through the Earth, so that different countries are invited to set up a system of states. I will especially tackle two aspects of Kant's focusing on a worldwide political order. First, Kant assigns a systematic role to the cosmopolitan right, what suggests reading that part of the theory of law as a necessary conclusion of the legal whole, although its institutional embodiment could not to be compared with that available for the state. In fact, the states cannot behave as individual citizens do, since they do not recognize any higher authority than themselves. Second the cosmopolitan law shows that coercion is not the unique instrument to fulfill legal obligations, for a cosmopolitan order should rather reflect the moral equality among states, instead of laying down a hierarchy over governmental structure. Third, I will discuss that the only way to pursue and discharge an active role in the political sphere according to Kant stems from the statehood, so that any "bourgeois society" is committed to help other needy and less developed peoples and societies in order to boost that they achieve their autonomy as a state. This will be the most rewarding contribution that a state could offer to the cosmopolitan order according to Kant's theory of right.

In the following essay, I attempt to reactualize some of Kant's most fundamental concepts of a state's sovereignty and the legitimacy of the cosmopolitan order. To this end, I provide what appears as a viable solution to Kant's " sovereignty dilemma " ; that is, the reconciliation between state sovereignty and the enforceability of international laws by international institutions. I consider that a key component of the overall Kantian cosmopolitan project is the role played by the transcendental notion of an " originally united will " in its validation of constituencies. I emphasize the view that for Kant state-citizens are also, as he says, " citizens of the world " (Weltbürger) or " citizens of the earth " (Erdbürger). I argue, furthermore, that a state's sovereignty must comply with a number of different constitutional wholes. I then proceed by confronting the Kantian notion of a general united will with the Habermasian conception of " double sovereignty ". I conclude by suggesting a fusion/synthesis between the two views, which would require endorsing the idea of cosmopolitan constitutionalism as a meta-framework for interpreting the legitimacy of member states' compliance with policy indications of transnational constituencies. §1 Kant's Sovereignty Dilemma The Kantian view on the legitimacy of the state cannot be disembodied from the international and cosmopolitan dimension of public law. Yet, prima facie, these sources of obligation generate a dialectical tension between the domestic right of state-citizens (citoyens)1 and the international and even cosmopolitan level of the rights of people as a " right of citizens of the 1

This paper takes up the questions of (1) how the refugee crisis exhibits the fault lines in what might otherwise seem to be a robust human rights regime and (2) what kinds of ways of seeing and thinking might better attune us to solving these problems. There is surprising agreement internationally on the content of human rights, although there is a huge gulf between international agreements on human rights and the protection of those most vital. The subtitle of the paper, " another stab at universal rights, " has a double entendre: in the midst of a crisis that is stabbing international agreements on human rights to its core, I will take a stab at using the crisis situation to point a way forward toward a cosmopolitan social imaginary that uses human imagination, not just as an ability to represent in one's mind what one has seen elsewhere, but also as an ability to imagine something radically new. This social imaginary points to the necessity of according everyone, refugees included, as having a right to politics and thus a hand in shaping their own world, including their new, host communities.

Theoria, Beograd, 2018

The purpose of this article is to present Kant's theory of the Right of Nations, which is the essential part of present-day international law debate. In his philosophical work, "Towards Perpetual Peace", Immanuel Kant is inquiring conditions for coexistence between the states. According to Kant, three elementary conditions lead us toward perpetual peace: 1) Republican government 2) Federation of Free States 3) Cosmopolitan right of a person to a world citizenship Federation of Free States has an important place in Kant's vision of the rights of nations and perpetual peace as a final goal of this doctrine. It is crucial for better understanding of Kant's position on the rights of nations. It is also the most objected part of Immanuel Kant's political philosophy by various contemporary critics and therefore demands further exploration and analysis. At first, a brief overview of the history of the law of nations, considering the arguments that preceded Kant's theory will be given. Further analysis of Kant's work should clear his position and offer an argument in support of his general ideas, reply to the objections and critics of his arguments and evaluate pro and contra opinions. Finally, the consequences of such argumentation and their influence on contemporary political thinking will be discussed. The possibility of appropriate consensus solution will be considered.