Kant's temptation and the new cosmopolitics

Abstract

This article exposes the critique of Kant made by the authors of the new cosmopolitics, a dissident current that rejects the cosmopolitan ideal of peace, denouncing what Isabelle Stengers calls Kant’s temptation: the imposition of a transcendent peace that, imposed in a global manner as an adjustment to an external tribunal, would enclose a declaration of war. The article examines this accusation and responds by explaining the meaning of the cosmopolitan ideal in Kant and its relation to the achievement of peace and the moral progress of humanity, pointing out three fundamental aspects: the relation of the Kantian ideal to human plasticity, the role of conflict in Kant’s anthropology, and the Kantian consideration of humanity as a moral whole. It concludes by indicating that, in the light of these nuances, this contestation to Kant would have to be revised.