Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper looks at recent works by Jeremy Waldron and asks how useful Immanuel Kant’s discussion of cosmopolitan right is for contemporary theorizing about cultural interaction and indigenous peoples. Waldron uses Kant’s category of cosmopolitan right as a starting point for his own theorizing, but diverges from the particulars of Kant’s analysis. I question whether Waldron has properly reconstructed Kant’s category of cosmopolitan right. If Waldron is wrong about the presuppositions of cosmopolitan right, it undermines his ability to draw lessons from cosmopolitan right for the discipline of politics at the domestic state level. I maintain that the autonomy that Kant did actually recognize cuts against Waldron’s claims about the spirit in which Kant approached cultural interaction. In Kant’s description of cosmopolitan right, the free movement of travelers is potentially restricted as soon as indigenous peoples' collective ways of life would be threatened. I argue that theories of cosmopolitan right should avoid the dark side of hospitality, where the right to attempt commerce is confused with a right to commerce. In justifying his argument about the necessity of his version of the supersession thesis, Waldron tells a story about historical inevitability that could in effect justify past ‘wrongs.' Waldron's theory then wrongfully scrubs from existence the stains of injustice. Such are the potential pitfalls in adapting cosmopolitan right without maintaining Kant's anti-imperialist sentiments.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: abstract

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Immanuel Kant describes an expanding federation of free states with republican constitutions that will lead to a perpetual peace. His philosophical foundations directly influenced the Democratic Peace Theory as we know it today; the idea that democracies will not go to war against one another has become the basis of the US and European foreign policies of spreading democracy around the world since the end of the Cold War. On the extreme opposite end of the political spectrum lies Kenneth Waltz's structural realism and Balance of Power theory, in which self-interested states residing in an anarchic world continually vie for power in order to be secure. The two traditions and theories are such polar opposites that we would assume the two shall never meet. I will use NATO's continuing existence as a military alliance after the fall of the Soviet Union, and its shift in mission over the past decade from deterrence to democratization and stability operations, to show that Kant has indeed met Waltz in alliance politics in the age of democratization.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: There can be no liberalism without missionary drive. The universalism of liberalism is the inevitable consequence of the position of reason in the liberal system of thought and of the natural rights ascribed to humans as reasonable subjects. From this position, liberalism cannot confine itself to inactive and defensive communitarism. However, the universal drive does not prescribe the instrument by which it is pursued in political practice. As to instruments, liberalism is fundamentally ambivalent. Depending on interpretations of human rights and of the character of (nondemocratic) enemies, political programs for liberal proselytism can vary between highly pacifist (that is, missionarism by the word and example) and highly militant (that is, missionarism by the sword); indeed, the external policies of democracies show wide variations between these poles. Deriving the principle of fallibility and prudence from liberal reasoning, the paper concludes with the proposition that liberal pacifism is the preferable option in most conceivable circumstances.