In contemporary political philosophy, cosmopolitanism is often seen as a moral notion, and it is regarded as a notion that might or might not require cosmopolitan legal or political institutions. In Kant, "cosmopolitan" is used to refer to a form of Right (Recht), which complements private, public, and international Right. Cosmopolitanism is part of Kant's legal and political and legal philosophy, and not of his moral philosophy. Similarly, with perpetual peace, which is regarded as the highest political good. In order to understand Kant's cosmopolitanism – and to see its uniqueness compared to many contemporary accounts, its placement in the Philosophy of Rights is crucial to note. In Kant, legal and political institutions are not a mere means to promote values that can be fully conceived independently of these institutions. Right constitutes certain type of relationships among individuals, which we can understand only with together with an understanding of the institutions of Right. In particular, Right constitutes a certain standing of the individual of having freedom as independence.
At the core of many contemporary accounts of cosmopolitanism lies an idea of human dignity. While the latter is a Kantian idea, we cannot understand Kant's own idea of cosmopolitan right on this basis of his idea of dignity from the Grundlegung. Rather, we must understand how the core ideas of his Rechtslehre, particularly the notion of freedom as independence, lead to the idea of cosmopolitan right. Freedom as independence can be secured only when individuals submit to a public legal order, which expresses an omnilateral as opposed to a unilateral will. However, in an anarchical system of states, the will of individual states will not be truly omnilateral, but retain an aspect of being unilateral. The only way for individual states not to express a merely unilateral will, and for citizens to enjoy freedom as independence, is by establishing international and cosmopolitan Right.
The paper will elaborate this argument by highlighting two aspects. First, I will argue for the importance and meaning of seeing Kant's cosmopolitanism as based on Right rather than morality. Secondly, I will develop the idea of freedom as independence as a republican conception of freedom, which differs from both the liberal idea of freedom as non-interference and Philip Pettit's freedom as non-domination.
It seems that the argument about freedom and the omnilateral will should lead Kant to endorse a world state rather than a looser world federation of free states. The paper will conclude with a discussion of this puzzle.
