Sovereignty and freedom: Immanuel Kant's liberal internationalist ‘legacy’

Abstract

This article explores a fundamental division among contemporary liberal internationalists regarding the relationship between state sovereignty and the goal of freedom. The article suggests that, in spite of his popular status among a wide variety of contemporary liberal international theorists, Immanuel Kant's political philosophy is an extraordinarily ambiguous ‘legacy’ because of the dualistic doctrine of state sovereignty to which he subscribed. Kant's thought is committed to state sovereignty while providing the grounds for a profound critique of its existence. The reason that sovereignty is ambiguous in Kant's political theory is that it is justified by his bifurcated understanding of human freedom.

Is normative power cosmopolitan? Rethinking European unity, norm diffusion, and international political theory

“…To this effect, Kant stressed that the ‘natural antagonism between men gives them reason to seek concord which can serve as the basis for social order and political institutions; this genesis of order takes place precisely through discord’ (as quoted in Bartelson, 1995: 268). It is in this sense that Kant proposed the renowned idea of a ‘pacific union’ as a rational instrument to manage – rather than eliminate – discords among and between actors of different normative orientations and to seek the coexistence of different subjectivities (Cavallar, 2001; Franceschet, 2001; Hurrell, 1990: 192–193; Lynch, 1994; Negretto, 1993; Waldron, 2000: 240–241). For instance, Kant’s Perpetual Peace explicitly proclaimed that ‘the Guarantee of a Perpetual Peace’ hinged on lively competition among actors with different values, religions, traditions, and languages: The idea of international right presupposes the separate existence of many independent adjoining states.…”

Two Faces of Liberalism: Kant, Paine, and the Question of Intervention

“…Cavallar (2001, 243) argued that “Kant seems to be wavering between a statist and a cosmopolitan approach.”Jahn (2005, 178) also explored tensions within the statist and cosmopolitan interpretations of Kant. For Franceschet (2001, 210), “Kant’s political philosophy offers an extraordinarily ambiguous foundation for contemporary internationalist theory because of the dualistic doctrine of state sovereignty to which he subscribed.” Although many of these ambiguities can be reduced by acknowledging the complexity that runs throughout Kant’s political writings, certain questions over sovereignty, world governance, and global obligation do not always find consistent answers.…”

Identifying the Place of Democratic Norms in Democratic Peace1

“…When embarking on the task of conceptualizing international Liberalism, Doyle mentions the ambiguity of the implications of domestic Liberal theory for international Liberal theory. He attributes this ambiguity to “the actual philosophical and historical richness of [the worldviews of]” classic Liberal thinkers, with some homogeneously pacific and others supportive under some circumstances of imperialism and intervention (Doyle 1997b:208–209; see also Franceschet 2001:212). While intrinsically valid, this depiction misses that ambiguity and differences would remain even if Liberal thinkers began with the same model of domestic Liberalism.…”