Panentheism as cosmopolitanism: Karl Christian Friedrich Krause's conception of a global human league

Abstract

Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832) left for posterity an impressive and astonishingly contemporary corpus of philosophical creativity. Not only does it cover numerous topics of theoretical and practical philosophy, from a panentheistic-cosmopolitan point of view, but, in terms of the history of philosophy, it may be seen as one of the first works from a European pen which also appreciates the Indian roots of European thinking in their systematic importance. It combines them with Platonic metaphysics and Kant's transcendental philosophy to form a system of philosophy that is truly intercultural. In what follows, Krause's fundamental argument for panentheism is presented before it is argued that Krause's panentheism entails a cosmopolitan theory of human society according to which it is a postulate of practical reason to realize a cosmopolitan global league of humanity.