This study interprets the later texts of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) with the approach of conceptual history. The selected works include a number of texts that are not generally regarded as politically interesting or relevant. This study also highlights Kant’s role as a significant classic figure in political thinking who still benefits modern research. The selected texts are approached as political discourses in a contemporary dialogue, and no principal explanation is sought for these from Kant’s famous “major” critiques. The texts are (...) read as part of Publicum, the public debate atmosphere during Prussia’s Late Enlightenment, in which the opinions of other debaters were criticised or further developed. The interpretation focuses on political problems in Kant’s production, many of which still confound researchers. Frequently asked critical questions include: Why does the Enlightenment philosopher name ownership and gender requirements for citizenship? Would not education or studies be suitable criteria? How is it possible that republicanism, an ideal raised as a guarantee of eternal peace, can exist in a monarchy, while a democracy is the most undesirable way to rule? Why should a tyranny or a bad ruler not be opposed, while the French Revolution is an admirable example? In this study, Kant’s way of thinking is interpreted by opening up the context of the era. Known as a reformer in many themes, Kant has a strong background in German theoretical history. For example, the value of the natural history theory cannot be ignored. This study presents a view of how Kant explains the social contract and the development that takes place through it from the natural state to a regulated social state. Furthermore, the definition of all the different aspects of citizenships owes to the heritage of natural law. This study demonstrates that Kant understood the Enlightenment as a political project, which was associated not only with the demand for a freedom of publication, but also with the debate over questions in the political sphere. In my interpretation, Kant’s Enlightenment theme also includes the demand to tear down universities’ horizontal division into faculties and to elevate the position of the philosophical faculty, free of external ties, to the level of other faculties, or even higher, to evaluate their scientific and philosophical grounds. (shrink)

This paper explores the possible impact of the recent legal developments on organizational whistleblowing on the autonomy and responsibility of whistleblowers. In the past thirty years numerous pieces of legislation have been passed to offer protection to whistleblowers from retaliation for disclosing organisational wrongdoing. An area that remains uncertain in relation to whistleblowing and its related policies in organisations, is whether these policies actually increase the individualisation of work, allowing employees to behave in accordance with their conscience and in line (...) with societal expectations or whether they are another management tool to control employees and protect organisations from them. The assumptions of whistleblower protection with regard to moral autonomy are examined in order to clarify the purpose of whistleblower protection at work. The two extreme positions in the discourse of whistleblowing are that whistleblowing legislation and policies either aim to enable individual responsibility and moral autonomy at work, or they aim to protect organisations by allowing them to control employees and make them liable for ethics at work. (shrink)

This essay aims to bring to light the distinctive features of Fichte's construal of cosmopolitan right in the Foundations of Natural Right—in comparison to Kant's—in the light of the current philosophical debate on migration and global justice. The paper is articulated in three steps. First, it analyzes the addressees and content of Fichte's cosmopolitan right by emphasizing its limited scope: by focusing on those individuals who do not come “from any state,” Fichte's discussion of cosmopolitan right foreruns Arendt's philosophical theorization (...) of statelessness and the “right to have rights.” Second, it considers Fichte's justification of cosmopolitan right—and its compatibility with his justification of private property rights—by stressing its ontological anchoring in the notions of “absolute will,” “personhood,” and “original right.” Finally, the essay considers the systematic position of cosmopolitan right with regard to the “right of nations” and the “right of a state” in Fichte's doctrine of right by giving special attention to the range of reasons that, according to Fichte, can legitimate the rejection of a stranger. (shrink)