From Cosmopolitanism to the Closed Commercial State

Abstract

Kant's cosmopolitanism can be viewed as motivated by moral concerns or by economic and in particular commercial concerns of a very practical nature. This panel focuses on aspects of Kant's account of cosmopolitanism as prompted primarily by the second type of concern. Papers will examine Fichte's discussion of Kant, for instance, in his "The Closed Commercial State", or more generally the relation between Kant's cosmopolitanism and practical considerations in his context and that of our societies.