O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a concepção de Justiça Internacional em Kant e Rawls e colocá-las em diálogo. Os eixos de análise serão o direito cosmopolita (Weltbürgerrecht) de Kant e o direito dos povos de Rawls. Nesse sentido, os setores internacionalistas dessas teorias serão discutidos e comparados em seus principais componentes, como a visão dos autores sobre a guerra, a imigração e a obrigação de acolhimento de refugiados. Buscar-se-á, ao longo do artigo, colocar essas teorias lado a lado com (...) o direito internacional moderno, e com alguns institutos de proteção do ser humano, como os direitos humanos e o direito dos refugiados. Ao final, buscar-se-á ponderar como esses autores conceberam a factibilidade de suas teorias, demonstrando que ambas podem ser consideradas “utopias realistas”. Esses temas foram escolhidos por estarem estritamente vinculados à temática da justiça internacional e aos desafios mais urgentes dessa disciplina. Nesse sentido, a análise das teorias de dois grandes expoentes da filosofia política será o pano de fundo para buscar tecer algumas considerações sobre o problema dos refugiados no mundo contemporâneo. Adicionalmente, buscar-se-á demonstrar que a teoria kantiana, por levar em conta os anseios e a autonomia do indivíduo e abranger obrigações cosmopolitas e humanitárias, é mais adequada para lidar com o desafio dos refugiados contemporaneamente. (shrink)

There exists a longstanding debate over the global institutional implications of Immanuel Kant's political philosophy: does such a philosophy entail a federal world government, or instead only a co...

Kant’s cosmopolitanism can be read from two main perspectives: temporal and spatial. Reading cosmopolitanism from a temporal perspective means paying attention to the historical realization of the ideal of cosmopolitanism and to its related issues such as: the progress of humankind, its final destination, the purpose of universal history, the highest purpose of nature. Instead, reading cosmopolitanism from a spatial perspective means paying attention, e.g. to the ‘fact’ of the sphericity of the earth and to its relationship with cosmopolitan right, (...) territoriality, borders and freedom of movement. In this paper I would like to show how adopting a spatial perspective is useful not only in order to delimit a field of inquiry, but also to shed new light on apparently well-known and thoroughly investigated notions of Kant’s cosmopolitanism, such as the notions of the citizen of the world, of the cosmopolitan right, and of the World republic. (shrink)

The paper starts out from a debate that occurred in Germany in 2015, where interpreters claimed to be able to divine Immanuel Kant’s views of the contemporary refugee crisis. It does not attempt to give a substantive answer to the title question, i.e. it does not try to specify the conclusive extension of cosmopolitan right. In contrast, it outlines the systematic work that would have to be done in order to be able to answer the title question. I start from (...) cosmopolitan right as natural right and ask what kinds of transformations cosmopolitan right would have to undergo to form a legitimate part of public international law, in parallel to Kant’s move from provisional private law to peremptory public law in his Doctrine of Right. For that purpose, I introduce distinctions between trivial and non-trivial transformation, between strong and weak transformation, and between transformation based on historically blameworthy and historically blameless action. (shrink)

Whereas several commentators have held that Kant’s argument for the postulate of private right fails insofar as it begs the question, I argue here that this criticism misses the mark. Critics have...

I argue that Kant’s mature political philosophy entails the provisionality thesis. The provisionality thesis asserts that in a world like ours, populated with beings sufficiently like us, acquired rights (rights to external objects of choice, including property, sovereignty and territory) are necessarily provisional. I motivate the standard view, which restricts the notion of provisional right to the state of nature and the transition from the state of nature to the civil condition. I then provide two textual arguments against it. I (...) conclude by reflecting on the normative implications of the provisionality thesis, arguing that they are more modest than has been formerly appreciated. (shrink)

Non-state peoples cannot be subjects of Kant’s international law, which accordingly affords them no protection against external interference. They might also lack the dynamic of private law at the basis of the duty of state entrance. Prima facie, this compels Kant to allow that their lands be appropriated and that they be forced out of the state of nature. But this conclusion is at odds with his cosmopolitanism, particularly its anti-imperialistic commitments: non-state peoples are protected against annexation, under Kant’s cosmopolitan (...) law. The paper makes three contributions to the debate on this tension. Firstly, it disambiguates scope, ground, and relata of the duty to exit the state of nature. Secondly, it argues that non-state peoples have an inter-group duty to exit the state of nature; and that this holds for a non-state people regardless of whether it also has an intra-group duty of state entrance, which remains unenforceable by outside parties. Finally, it offers a construal of the former duty as a cosmopolitan duty to interact peacefully even in the absence of a shared culture. (shrink)