Kant's hospitality: Beyond duties of rescue?

Abstract

The four papers in this panel focus on Kant's consmopolitan right, more exactly, on his idea of a right to hospitality. Although they argue from different perspective, each paper examines both this right to hospitality, and the extent to which there is scope in Kant's account for duties of a state towards non-citizens, duties which go beyond their right to hospitality. One possibility, for instance, would be to envisage these duties as ethical duties, based on generosity and responsibility. A second avenue is to obtain guidance by examining critically current immigration policies and systems. For example, some cases suggest that immigration policies, whose aim is to protect dehumanisation, may have precisely a dehumanising effect, and the task is then to revise such policies to make them fit for their purpose. A further attempt starts from the observation that enforceable rights are associated with membership to a state, that is, with citizenship. Yet, if rights protecting dignity and respect are accorded irrespective of citizenship status (perhaps in virtue of being a member of the global political community), then such forms of protection may well go beyond a duty of rescue. Finally, also starting from a critique of statists' normative assumptions, it is possible to argue that a state's interaction with refugee, even in the form of coercion, presupposes a rightful relation between state and refugees. Such a relation requires that everyone should be considered as equally free and, hence, as protected against rights violations.

Title	Details
In search of moral politics: Kant cosmopolitan right in state’s sovereignty crises	View Paper Details
From Dehumanisation to Resistance: A Kantian Account of our Duties to Refugees	View Paper Details
Kant’s Cosmopolitanism as Universalism: Human Rights reconsidered	View Paper Details