Much, if not all, of the literature on the topic of Kant’s advocacy of a world state vs. a federal league of nations – and related issues of citizenship as well as cosmopolitan law – rely heavily on the purported analogy Kant draws between individuals and states. From this analogy, many derive the seeming paradox that Kant simultaneously requires the individual to leave the “state of nature” by forming a civic condition in the state, while on one dominant reading, he nonetheless rejects the same move on the part of states – to leave the state of nature among them to form one unified world state.
This discussion overlooks an analogy that Kant draws between family and state, both in the sections on international and cosmopolitan law and in his discussion of family law. Specifically, this paper will argue that Kant sees the state as a legal family and citizens as legal children – their legal status produced through the mechanisms of the state. The paper will argue that one major source of Kant’s position on citizenship is a view of the state as producing its population. The paper then examines the relation between state and demography, finally extending the analysis to modern-day “pro-natalist” policies of European welfare states – policies designed to reproduce the population in order to fulfill the social welfare contract (pensions, etc.), but which nonetheless function to exclude the option of “replacement immigration” in an over-populated world on nationalist grounds.
