Kant’s Cosmopolitanism as Universalism: Human Rights reconsidered

The aim of the present paper is to pose the question of cosmopolitanism anew in terms of the language of human rights the defense of which has become the main concern of global politics. Taking my cue from Hannah Arendt, I will argue that “the right to have rights,” i.e., the claim of every human being to be recognized as a person entitled to legally protected rights is a fundamental moral right. In the 18th century Declarations of the Rights of Man and Citizen, human rights appeared as inalienable and self-evident norms founded on human nature. It was human nature that ensured the universality and equality of the rights. In the 20th century, however, after the end of the First World War and the dismemberment of the great Empires, the massive appearance of refugees evinced that human nature was hardly sufficient by itself to make human being a subject of rights. One is entitled to rights only as a member of a national state and, therefore, by being something more than a human being. We are not born free and equal. We become free and equal on account of our membership to a political community. The paper will attempt to argue for the relevance of Kant’s Cosmopolitan right developed in in the Third Article of his essay on “Perpetual Peace” and The Metaphysics of Morals. Βy distinguishing the right to hospitality from that to permanent residence Kant’s cosmopolitan right seems to oscillate between practical reason’s categorical imperative to offer a temporary shelter to the stranger and the sovereignty right of the republican state to deprive the latter of his/her permanent residence and inclusion in the political community. It also seems to oscillate between an international legal framework of human rights protection and the right of the national state to decide over who is entitled to be its citizen. Yet interpreted in the light of his idea of “humanity” in the person of anyone as an end in itself the Kantian cosmopolitan right could be the moral correlate of “the right to have rights” implying the enforcement of inalienable rights which will insure the dignity and respect of human person irrespectively of the citizenship status and guarantee first and foremost a human’s place in a political community, his/her place in the world.