Rethinking Kant’s cosmopolitan law through the lens of Königsberg
Immanuel Kant, Germany’s most famous philosopher from the 18th century, is best known for his work in ethics and metaphysics. Less widely explored, however, is his theory of cosmopolitan law, which envisions a global community where individuals are citizens of a universal state with equal rights, regardless of national origin. This cosmopolitan vision proposed that people should have the right to visit foreign countries peacefully, shaping an early framework of international relations based on respect rather than conquest. To shed new light on Kant’s cosmopolitan right, the EU-funded GEOCOSM project examined his lectures on geography and anthropology – courses he taught for decades at the University of Königsberg. Undertaken with the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the project focused on the city of Königsberg to give a local historical context of Kant’s intellectual environment. “Ironically, the cosmopolitan Kant is notorious for never having travelled far from Königsberg. His life there has been regarded as uneventful or even dull, located far from the centres of the Enlightenment,” describes Jonas Gerling, GEOCOSM project coordinator. “Studying Königsberg, however, I discovered a rich intellectual life of international merchants, aristocrats, officers, diplomats, writers, as well as naturalists and scholars who connected Kant to the wider world.”
Historical context and evolution
GEOCOSM employed historical contextualism to investigate Kant’s lectures within their original setting. It retraced the sources that informed his thinking, related his lectures to local and global historical events, and situated these aspects within the intellectual debates in Königsberg. The study defied the conventional image of Kant as a purely abstract thinker and revealed him as a pragmatic philosopher who evolved his thinking in response to world events. “Kant experimented and struggled with his own thoughts. He was interested in particular political events and understood that universal principles may need to be applied differently in different situations,” explains Gerling. “This means that Kant’s political thought should not be interpreted as a political model for organising the world, but rather as an attitude that aspires towards shared ideals such as freedom and human rights, while acknowledging that these ideals may be realised differently in different settings and times.”
Embracing philosophical tensions
Kant was long regarded as a firm advocate of universal human rights, but more recently, this view has been challenged. The GEOCOSM project offers a valuable perspective on the controversial aspects of Kant’s work. “Research has begun to focus on Kant’s hierarchical division of human races, arguing that he excluded non-white people from having full moral capacities (and implicitly full moral worth),” says Gerling. “The problem, I believe, lies in trying to fix Kant’s view. This can only be done by prioritising some of his writings over others. When dealing with such questions historically, the attempt to fixate on Kant’s thought proves to be much more complicated and often reveals tensions within his own writings.” Instead, GEOCOSM proposes an approach that highlights these tensions, examining how Kant worked through philosophical problems rather than focusing solely on his conclusions. By recognising how even one of history’s greatest thinkers struggled with contradictions and revised his views, the project offers a more human understanding of philosophy as an ongoing process rather than a set of fixed beliefs.
Keywords
GEOCOSM, Kant, Königsberg, historical contextualism, cosmopolitan law, philosophy, Enlightenment
