De-Limitation and the Law: A Re-Consideration of Kant’s Legal Philosophy of Right in the light of Hans Schelkshorn’s Concept of De-Limitation

This paper aims to take Hans Schelkshorn’s analysis of the relation between power and reason in early modern thought as starting point for a reconsideration of key aspects of Kant’s legal and political philosophy. As Schelkshorn describes in his 2024 book Rethinking European Modernity: Reason, Power, and Coloniality in Early Modern Thought, early modern thought must be considered through the lens of the concept of "de-limitations" (Entgrenzungen). In different disciplines, such as cosmology, anthropology, or geography, such de-limitations lead to decisive paradigmatic changes and breakthroughs of reason. However, these breakthroughs show at the same time a "darker" side, above all domination of nature through technological power, unrestrained state power, and colonialist expansionism. The advancements of reason dialectically convert into a power syndrome. This paper aims to extend against the background of this analysis Schelkshorn’s concept of de-limitation to Kant’s philosophy, the relation of theoretical and practical philosophy in particular. The paradigmatic context to start with is Kant’s description of the "land of truth" in the Critique of Pure Reason: the realm constituted by the twelve categories, i.e., the world we may experience, is a "country of truth", which is "mapped" by the Critique, possessed, and defended against any alien interference form the "wide and stormy ocean, the true home of illusion". (Critique of Pure Reason, B 295) Interestingly, however, the plausibility of the comparison between secure knowledge and secure possession seems to reach its limits when it comes to their respective presupposition: secure knowledge is only possible with regard to objects of experience, secure possession as intelligible possession is only possible when the limits of space and time are left out. (Doctrine of Right A 67) Commonly, the use of legal and political concepts by Kant in the context of theoretical philosophy is analysed through the lens of the concept of metaphor. (Pietsch 2010) However, the question which will be raised through this paper concerns the paradoxical interplay between limitation (of knowledge) and de-limitation (of a legal position) in Kant. Since the law and rights are according to Kant nevertheless territorially rooted since the first acquisition of anything as mine or thine must be an acquisition of the land, the question seems to arise to which extent the conceptual de-limitation of the legal relation is subject to the same form of dialectic as the abovementioned examples. Does it lead to an unlimited cosmopolitan right – or to a geographically unlimited legalisation of the exercise of sovereign power by colonial empires?