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The reflections above lead precisely to what Rousseau, in his observations on Saint Pierre’s project for peace, had failed to provide. Analogously to Rousseau, Kant grounds political obligation on the dialectic between the distributive will of all and the collective general will. However, he does so in a broader perspective whereby the ius cosmopoliticum is systematically derived by both domestic and international public right.

The Metaphysics of morals contributes significantly to clarify the meaning of this passage. In the Doctrine of right the category of “public right” introduces the necessity of a sum of laws regulating the conditions of interaction among human beings both taken as single individuals and as members of constituted political units. Since “they all affect one another”, Kant claims here, “a rightful condition under a will uniting them”, is needed.⁵²

From here it is possible to consider more in detail the necessity and systematic challenges faced by the conceptualization of cosmopolitan right (ius cosmopoliticum) as distinctive from and related to the right of states (ius gentium). Both ius cosmopoliticum and ius gentium appear normatively desirable to put an end to the anarchy of the international sphere where states, “like lawless savages” are in a “non-rightful condition”.⁵³ However, Kant specifies the limits of the analogy by clarifying the diversity of agents operating in the domestic and in the international sphere. International right involves “not only the relation of one state toward another as a whole, but also the relation of individual persons of one state toward the individuals of another, as well as toward another state as a whole”.⁵⁴

The implications of such distinction are clarified in further detail in the section on Cosmopolitan right, immediately following the discussion on the right of nations and the conditions of war and peace between sovereign states. The specificity and all-encompassing relevance of cosmopolitan right is deduced by the global extension and reciprocal influence of interactions among people: “all stand originally in a community of land”.⁵⁵ This is, as Kant clarifies, a “community of possible physical interaction (commercium)” in which each member may offer “to engage in commerce with any other, and each has the right to make this attempt without the other being authorized to

52 Kant, “The Metaphysics of Morals,” 455.

53 Ibid., 482.

54 Ibid.

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behave toward it as an enemy because it has made this attempt”. ⁵⁶ However, it is important to notice how the only category of right that recognizes the status of individuals, as such, amounts to a mere “attempt to try to establish community with all and, to this end, to visit all regions of the earth”.⁵⁷

Cosmopolitanism does not therefore replace statism. It does not cancel the right of states to territorial integrity and autonomous decision-making, even when the goal is to ensure that “crude peoples will become civilized”⁵⁸ (or to promote human rights - one would be tempted to say in modern jargon). Cosmopolitanism integrates traditional conceptions of ius gentium with a political duty to facilitate non-exploitative forms of exchange (including trade) between states – a constraint that goes alongside with a powerful critique to colonialism and foreign intervention.⁵⁹ Far from establishing the normative superiority of individuals over states, cosmopolitan right protects organized territorial entities from the violent or manipulative moves of powerful countries. Indeed, Kant claims that even when the goal is that of obtaining consent to sign a contract, such contract should not “take advantage of the ignorance of those inhabitants”.⁶⁰ But how could one take seriously cosmopolitan right in the absence of a positive agent realizing its principles, critics ask?

This is where the prospect of a just framework for regulating interactions among sovereign states becomes crucial for the analytical understanding of cosmopolitanism.

Kant alludes to it in the very definition of the concept: “this right, since it has to do with the possible union of all nations with a view to certain universal laws for their possible commerce, can be called cosmopolitan right (ius cosmopoliticum).⁶¹ As it is clear from those passages, although recognizing the intrinsic validity and trans-national sphere of application of individual claims, political agency is linked to the capacity of cooperation and to the collective will of each sovereign state.

56 Ibid. Unfortunately I cannot discuss in more detail the justification of cosmopolitan right derived from the global extension of interactions among individuals but only mention that it may be linked to the broader “relational” requirement of Kant’s metaphysics of right. An excellent discussion of this issue is provided in Flikschuh, “Justice or Virtue? Kant’s Problem of “International Right”.” Pauline Kleingeld has also focused on the justification of a cosmopolitan right by linking it to Kant’s innate right to freedom, see Kleingeld, “Kant's Cosmopolitan Law: World Citizenship for a Global Order,” 78-79.

57 Kant, “The Metaphysics of Morals,” 489.

58 Ibid., 490.

59 Ibid. I discuss further the issue of cosmopolitan principles facilitating non-exploitative international trade in chapter IV.

60 Ibid.

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Kant’s scepticism towards the creation of a unitary political body with coercive powers is not due to concerns on the empirical feasibility of the project, as it might superficially appear from a hastened reading of The doctrine of right.⁶² Instead, it is consistent with two strong arguments by virtue of which the analogy between individual and state anarchy in the international sphere ultimately collapses.

The first one refers to Kant’s remarks on the undesirability of a sovereign enforcer of cosmopolitan justice. In The doctrine of right he emphasizes that a single political body, globally extended and with coercive powers, would be impossible to govern, might soon degenerate into despotism and establish an irreversible anarchy.⁶³ In Toward perpetual peace he comments on this issue with an observation which reminds very much of Rousseau’s discussion on patriotism in The social contract. Rousseau noticed here that “the more the social bond stretches, the looser it grows” and Kant seems to quote this passage implicitly when he emphasizes that “as the range of government expands laws progressively loose their vigour”.⁶⁴ As Rousseau had emphasized, unlimited territorial extension would undermine patriotism by turning citizens into strangers who share nothing but a coercively imposed allegiance to laws.

Without popular sovereignty being integrated by civic education, without a substantive ethical bond and laws designed to reflect the spirit of a people, the general will would be corrupted by the emergence of selfish particularism and political institutions would lack motivational stability. For Kant too, the diversity of cultures and religions – even if it may initially give rise to conflict – allows for a “gradual approach of human beings to greater agreement in principles”.⁶⁵ Cosmopolitanism is in this case “produced and secured” not merely through the coercive use of forces but “by means of their equilibrium in the liveliest competition”.⁶⁶

The second argument relates to Kant’s explicit emphasis of the difference between the anarchical condition of individuals in the domestic sphere and that of states in the international one. As he clarifies, “such a state of affairs cannot be pronounced completely unjust since it allows each party to act as a judge in its own cause”. In fact states, intended in the Rousseauean sense of political communities, do not face the same

62 This “pragmatic” argument is made by Hoeffe, Kant’s Cosmopolitan Theory 189-203.

63 Kant, “The Metaphysics of Morals,” 487.

64 Jean Jacques Rousseau, “Considerations on the Government of Poland,” in The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1772]

1997), 113. Kant, “The Metaphysics of Morals,” 336.

65 Kant, “Toward Perpetual Peace,” 336.

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“lawless” condition as that of individuals in the state of nature. For, as to states, Kant claims, “they already have a rightful constitution internally and hence have outgrown the constraint of others to bring them under a more extended law-governed constitution in accordance with their concepts of right”. ⁶⁷

The superiority of public right over an arbitrary way of accommodating controversies between private individuals produces a shift away from any easy analogy of the international order with the domestic state of nature. For Kant, as for Rousseau, justice is realized through citizens’ participation in collective political practices of deliberation, through the exercise of popular sovereignty supplemented by civic education. Ius cosmopoliticum represents a necessary “supplement to the unwritten code of the right of a state and the right of nations”, it shows the possibility of a normative articulation of global principles of justice.⁶⁸ It constitutes the condition of development of the ius gentium but it neither leads to an exercise of power with juridical rule – which is always statual or inter-statual - nor does it require a substitution or vertical dispersion of sovereignty.⁶⁹

While replacing the individualistic aspect of cosmopolitanism with a project of global justice which aims to take into account the claims of all affected parties, the moral concern of cosmopolitanism is transformed into a typical Rousseauean political demand, vindicating the need for a collective effort at the level of the general will. However, Kant’s ius cosmopoliticum does not abolish the preceding ius gentium; instead, it constitutes its historical-universal condition of development. This seems to be a relevant element to take into account while discussing the link between principles and agency in a theory of global justice. Within the Kantian paradigm, ius cosmopoliticum acts as a regulative principle orienting historical and political initiatives with global inspiration.

Realizing such a principle requires however mobilizing political agency within the state

67 Kant, “Toward Perpetual Peace,” 327. Katrin Flikschuh rightly emphasizes the limits of the analogy between individuals and states with regard to the question of sovereignty. As she notices the relational metaphysics of Kant’s Doctrine of right allows for a distinction between the former and the latter, the ability of individuals to claim rights does not precede but rather follow the existence of a sovereign authority. Unlike states, individuals are not right-enforcers; they may be compelled to enter a civil condition but an attempt to coerce states would result in the dissolution of every relation of right. See Flikschuh, “Justice or Virtue? Kant’s Problem of “International Right”,” 11 and 24-5.

68 Kant, “Toward Perpetual Peace,” 330-1.

69 Contrary to what is usually assumed by contemporary cosmopolitans, for example Charles Beitz,

“Cosmopolitan Liberalism and the States System,” in Political Structuring in Europe, ed. Chris Brown (London: Routledge, 1994), 124-26, O'Neill, Bounds of Justice 171-85, Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002) 182-95. I will return to contemporary perspectives in

because only here the political, social and cultural conditions of reciprocity, required for the allocation of political obligations, may be found.