The Emergence of Kant’s Political Philosophy

The Emergence of Kant's Political Philosophy looks at the impact of Kant's political philosophy upon subsequent political thinkers, from philosophers in his time such as Fichte, Von Humboldt, and Hegel and ending with John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas in the late twentieth century. The early chapters develop a view of Kant's political philosophy which guides the selection of topics and authors surveyed. The main aspects of Kant's political thinking, and several of the controversies they have aroused, are presented: his ideas on freedom, the state, women, property, the social contract both in domestic and international politics, and his theory of world peace. The book defends Kant's republican, cosmopolitan view of politics against realist, conservative, liberal nationalist, socialist revolutionary, and liberal welfare views of politics that arise in the writings of those who respond most tellingly to his views. Kant is criticised strongly by Fichte, Hegel, Marx who nevertheless subscribe to aspects of his philosophy, and from the Hegelian perspective by the British Idealists T. H. Green and Edward Caird. He is praised for his progressive views by Karl Vorländer, Hannah Arendt, and Lucien Goldmann and embraced in a systematic way by Rawls and Habermas. The book seeks to demonstrate how Kant's political philosophy emerges from its relative neglect in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to a position of unquestioned prominence in the early twenty-first century.