2015 Special Issue

My article is devoted to one of the main concepts of early modern natural law, i. e. the concept of obligation. Starting with Pufendorf's concept of obligation, it will be demonstrated that the natural law is grounded on the will of God. In contrast, the concept of obligation in Christian Wolff's Philosophia practica universalis has no need to found the validity of obligation of natural law in God's will. Instead he developed a concept which was based on the idea of a free self-binding moral subject. Therefore, Wolff's Philosophy has a great impact on Kant's own moral philosophy and especially on his concept of obligation. I will conclude by showing to what extent Kant was going beyond the early modern concept of the natural law tradition.

According to Kant, “right in a state of nature is called private right” (MS, AA VI, S. 242). It is my claim that there is no room for a right to enforce the offer of benefits in the private right. Firstly, I will show how the concept of an innate right to freedom provides no conceptual foundation for a right to enforcement of alleged duties of cooperation. Since my argument is much more conceptual than hermeneutical, Isaiah Berlin’s analysis of negative liberty in “Two Concepts of Liberty” will be helpful here. Secondly, I will argue that the concepts of original acquisition and voluntary transfers are also at odds with the idea of a redistributive justice. At this point, it will be very useful to notice that the first two principles of justice in holdings of Robert Nozick roughly corresponds to the first two sections of Kant’s theory of acquisition of external things in the private right. Finally, I will sketch an objection against political uses of a principle of historical rectification of acquisitions. The principle of rectification is the third and last principle of Nozick’s entitlement theory of justice in distribution, and it should be of concern to Kantians too, since it is a mere principle of rectification of the two first principles. Due to the points I am going to make, I conclude that, if somewhere, redistributivism should make its case in Kant’s doctrine of public right, as a right of a State.

This paper argues whether Kant’s cosmopolitanism entails a specific theory of coercion. I will especially tackle Kant’s account of international political order. First, I claim that Kant attributes a systematic role to the cosmopolitan right, what justifies considering this part of the doctrine of law as a necessary rational conclusion of the legal system, although its institutional embodiment differs from that required by the rights of states. I highlight that according to Kant states may not behave as individual citizens do, since they do not recognize any higher authority than themselves. Second, cosmopolitan law shows that coercion is not an insurmountable condition to fulfill legal obligations, since the cosmopolitan order depends on the moral equality among states, far from involving a hierarchy over governmental structure. Third, I will discuss that the only reason to perform an active role in the political sphere according to Kant stems from the statehood, so that to help other needy and less developed peoples and societies in order to boost that they achieve their autonomy as a state would not belong to the duties that a republic should abide to. Thus, the transformation of a human society into a republican civil union means according to Kant’s account of right the greatest contribution that a state could offer to enhance the cosmopolitan order.

The article examines the following problems: 1) How well-founded is the comparison of the ideas of Kant’s essay «Towards Perpetual Peace», written in late XVIII century, with the implementation of nowadays project of European Union 2) If such parallels are possible, to what extent the structure of the EU corresponds to Kant’s vision? 3) Which Kantian ideas are of the foremost importance to future development of the EU? Basing on the analysis of Kant’s treatise and of the current structure of the EU, the author arrives to the conclusion that the two projects can suitably be compared. However, such comparison requires viewing the EU as an intermediate stage in the establishment of global peace union. The comparative analysis of Kant’s theory and the European project, the EU in its current form suits Kant’s definition of a federation of sovereign states, united for the purpose of securing peace, and in some respects went even further. The process of European integration has transformed Europe’s regional buildup from the arena of regular war conflicts into the society of peace, prosperity, liberty and right. It is obvious that it its development the EU will undergo difficulties and crises. However, the general direction, chosen by the union of European states, aiming at the development of rights and liberties, at good-will and cooperation between individuals, societies and states perfectly corresponds to the spirit of Kant’s philosophy and should guarantee of success in establishing global peace in the future.