Kant's Political Philosophy

RESUMEN Em Direito e Democracia, Habermas apresenta uma ambiguidade no conceito kantiano de autonomia que levaria a uma relação de concorrência entre direitos humanos e soberania popular: este conceito teria sido introduzido do ponto de vista privado do sujeito individual que julga moralmente e explicitado do ponto de vista da formação política discursiva e democrática da vontade. Contrapondo-se a essa leitura, Maus argumenta que Kant desenvolve os direitos humanos e a soberania popular na mais estreita complementaridade recíproca. Contudo, ela aceita a crítica de Habermas ao caráter monológico do princípio kantiano da moral, mantendo a ambiguidade do conceito de autonomia. No presente artigo pretendo sugerir que quando se atenta para as concepções de Esclarecimento e "uso público da razão" apresentadas por Kant nos textos políticos torna-se possível compreender que longe de desvalorizar a formação política da vontade, Kant a estabelece como um passo fundamental para a realização da moralidade e, portanto, da autonomia da vontade. Num primeiro momento, argumentarei que ao explicar o princípio de autonomia mediante a ideia de autolegislação da vontade, Kant não introduz uma ambiguidade neste conceito. Pelo contrário, ele estabelece uma estrutura normativa comum entre os domínios da moral e do direito. Por fim, retornarei à Doutrina do Direito para argumentar que, para Kant, a interação e comunicação entre os cidadãos não é lateral para a legitimação do direito, visto que são exigidos o consentimento dos membros da comunidade política e o convencimento pela razão. ABSTRACT In Between Facts and Norms, Jürgen Habermas points out an ambiguity in the Kantian concept of autonomy that would lead to an antagonism between human rights and popular sovereignty. He charges Kant of introducing this concept from the private point of view of the individual subject who judges morally and of elucidating it from the point of view of the discursive and democratic political formation of the will. Against this reading, Ingeborg Maus

Kantian legal philosophers have wondered: how it is that we can be obligated to obey the terms of a statute passed by a legislative body? Kant claimed that these so-called 'juridical laws' are 'categorical imperatives' - unconditional rational requirements for us. However, Kantians such as Marcus Willaschek have doubted that this is possible. This chapter debuts a Kantian theory of legal obligation according to which juridical laws are categorical imperatives, and it demonstrates that threatened punishments play a critical role in making them so.

Reassessing Kant’s rejection of a World Republic
This paper attempts to re-examine Kant's rejection of a world republic. In the second definitive article of his book, “Towards the Perpetual Peace”, the definition of international law is presented, according to which international law is not based on a state of nations (a world republic), which unites all states, but on a league of nations. Kant's argument for the foundation of a league of nations often has been regarded as problematic and criticized as “non-Kantian”. With regard to this problem, I first turn my attention to the analytic argument in the explanation of the second definitive article that a state of nations conflicts with the presupposition of international law. This argument has a great importance for the construction of the system of public law by reason. International law and state law must be differentiated from one another, not according to their territorial scope, but according to the nature of the government's constitution. Therefore, a world republic is by nature referring only to state law insofar as it is a sovereign state, although it can treat all states as its members. This analytic argument excludes all alternatives other than a league of nations from the theory of international law.
By contrast, the empirical argument against a single global state plays a different role than the above analytic argument. The empirical argument is not meant to indicate the validity of a league of nations or the undesirability of a single global state. Rather, it shows the possibility of establishing a league of nations which is legitimized by purely philosophical considerations from the viewpoint of the mechanisms of nature and human inclinations and rejects the idea that perpetual peace is unrealizable. Kant assures the states the duty to establish a league of Nations by showing the realizability of what is right in reason.

In this article, I show how today’s cosmopolitan thinking can be enlightened through a genealogical reflection. Starting from the thesis that Plato, as a political actor, wanted to silence the cosmopolitan-federal discourses of his time, I ask whether the implicit assumptions of today’s cosmopolitan thought - that one can refer to Immanuel Kant for normative foundations and find institutional support in international law - are persuasive. By way of a contextual interpretation of Kant I show that he did not just sketch the development towards cosmopolitan peace, but in his Treatise on Religion also named possible counter-movements and located the kernel of all changes not in the political sphere but in each individual’s consciousness. These ‘metaphysical consequences’ cannot be avoided by relying in a ‘post-metaphysical’ fashion on developments in international law. Here, Hans Kelsen serves as an interlocutor. He conceived his Pure Theory of Law not like H.L.A. from the background of a liberal common sense consciousness but as a response to the unsolvable value conflicts of his time. At the same time took a distinctive position in the raucous sea of these conflicts.

Some times the question comes to most of us why we should sacrifice our personal interests for the sake of some moral commands. Over the centuries several answers have been suggested. Kant's moral philosophy seems to me to give the most satisfactory justification of morality. In his Metaphysics of Morals. Kant starts by declaring that the (universal) reason is the source and basis for moral imperative which is both categorical and universal; and he calls it the categorical imperative. All other moral laws or maxims are derived from this one categorical imperative  that what is right or wrong for me is right or wrong for every one else.. And since human beings are ends-in-themselves by virtue of their rationality / humanity, every person deserve respect from others.  One should be moral because moral commands are given by our own reason. In the second part of the Metaphysics of Morals  Kant reasserts that humanity is an end-in -itself; and from this dictum derives a profound morality. Since a rational person is an end-in-herself, she should seek to strive for her own moral perfection. Secondly, Kant repeats the Golden rule:  We should help our fellow beings since we expect the same help from them in the hour of our need; and also since  all of us share both our reason and animal needs, and live in the same world.

Contemporary "realists" attack the Kantian influence on political philosophy. A main charge is that Kantians fail to understand the specificity of politics and neglect to develop a "distinctively political thought" that differs from moral philosophy. Instead, the critics say, Kantians are guilty of an "ethics-first approach to politics," in which political theory is a mere application of moral principles. But what does this ethics-first approach have to do with Kant himself? Very little. This article shows how Kant's approach to political theory at a fundamental level includes political institutions, power, and coercion as well as disagreement, security, and coordination problems. In contrast to realists, Kant has a fundamental principle, which can explain why and guide how we ought to approach the political question, namely the norm of equal freedom. Yet, Kant's theory does not take the form of a moralistic ought addressed to the isolated individual, but concerns a problem that we share as interdependent beings and that requires common institutions. The fruitfulness of the Kantian approach, then, is that it can take the political question seriously without being uncritical of actual politics and power, and that it can be normative without being moralistic.

This is a Lithuanian translation, by Giedrius Sadauskas, of my paper, ‘The Philosopher as a “Secret Agent” for Peace: Taking Seriously Kant’s Revival of the “Old Question” ’, in Valerio Rohden, Ricardo R. Terra and Guido A. de Almeida (eds.), Recht und Frieden in der Philosophie Kants, vol. 4 of Akten des X. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), pp.601-612.  An offprint of the English version is available in the "Kant 4 - Moral and political philosophy articles" section of this website. An online version of the text (in Lithuanian) is available at the link shown below.

L'exposé porte sur la philosophie politique de Kant. Il comporte cinq parties: 1/ La Révolution comme indice anthropologique du progrès historique; 2/ La  révolution: son impossibilité juridique, son effectivité politique; 3/ La république, horizon de l'Etat moderne; 4/ Qui est le souverain?; 5/ Vers une  république des peuples.

Kant's philosophy through three moments.

Kant'ın üç moment üzerinden felsefesi.

Bu çalışmada Kant’ın eleştirel felsefesinin üç uğrağı, başka deyişle Saf Aklın Eleştirisi (1781), Pratik Aklın Eleştirisi (1788) ve Yargıgücünün Eleştirisi (1790) adlı eserleri bağlamında ele alınmaya çalışılacaktır. 
Kant, 1770-1 kışı sırasında, Duyulur ve Anlaşılır Dünyanın Biçim ve İlkeleri adlı başlangıç söylemini kaleme aldıktan sonra, bu eseri bir kenara bırakmaya ve yeni bir çalışmaya girme düşüncesini geliştirir. Haziran 1771’de Öğrencisi Marcus Herz’e gönderdiği bir mektupta Duyarlığın ve Aklın Sınırları başlıklı yeni bir kitap üzerinde çalışmaya başladığını yazar. Söz konusu çalışmada duyulur dünyanın deneyiminden önce belirlenmiş olarak alınan temel ilke ve yasaların, beğeni teorisinde, metafizikte ve ahlâkta kapsanan konularla ilişkilerini ele almayı öneriyordu.  Kant, bu niyetinin sonucunda yaklaşık on yıllık bir sessizlikten sonra Saf Aklın Eleştirisi’ni ve diğer eleştirilerini kamuya sunar. Saf Akıl uğrağındaki eleştiriye geçebilmek için önce, Kant’ın bu çalışmanın içeriğini ve niyetini aktardığı Önsöz(ler)e  değinelim.