Kantian Autonomy and the Resilient Nation: Collective Identity, Statehood, and the Moral Foundations of Sovereignty

The concept of the nation remains central to political theory and practice, yet it is frequently framed through historical, cultural, or ethnic essentialisms that obscure its normative foundations. This paper advances a politico-philosophical reorientation of nationhood by placing political autonomy at the centre of statehood, sovereignty, and national resilience. Against essentialist and power-centric paradigms, it argues that the nation should be understood not as a pre-political or inherited entity, but as a juridical and moral project grounded in rational self-legislation, public law, and collective self-rule. Drawing primarily on Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy, the paper reconstructs autonomy as the condition of legitimate political authority. In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant conceives autonomy as realised through a constitutional legal order (Rechtsstaat) in which individuals relate to one another as free and equal citizens under public law. Autonomy does not imply the absence of constraint, but participation in laws that citizens could rationally will as universal. Nationhood thus emerges as the collective expression of autonomous self-rule, where legitimacy derives from public reason, legality, and civic equality rather than shared culture, origin, or historical narrative. This autonomy-centred account reshapes the meaning of sovereignty. In Toward Perpetual Peace, Kant rejects absolutist or Hobbesian conceptions of sovereignty in favour of morally conditioned political authority. Sovereignty is legitimate only insofar as it preserves the autonomy of citizens and conforms to universal legal principles. Autonomy therefore functions both as an internal principle of constitutional governance and as a normative constraint on sovereign power, extending to the international sphere, where political self-rule must remain compatible with cosmopolitan legality. These Kantian claims are further illuminated through engagement with Baruch Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, which likewise rejects transcendental sources of political authority. For Spinoza, political legitimacy depends on the alignment of power with reason and collective flourishing. Autonomy consists in the collective capacity of individuals to act in accordance with rational understanding, enabled by institutions that channel political power toward common flourishing. The paper then integrates these philosophical foundations with contemporary debates on national resilience, particularly the distinction between nation-based and state-based resilience. Interpreted through Kantian autonomy, nation-based resilience depends on civic trust, shared moral commitments, and identification with lawful institutions rather than cultural homogeneity. State-based resilience concerns the adaptive capacity of political institutions to govern justly, respond to crisis, and maintain legitimacy through responsiveness to the autonomous will of the people. The paper concludes that the resilient nation is defined not by fixed identity or sovereign power, but by its ongoing capacity for autonomous self-governance.