SOME PARADOXES OF KANTIAN RIGHT: SOCIAL REFORMATION AND COSMOPOLITAN PREPUBLICANISM

Abstract

The article aims to argue that the Kantian doctrine of right lacks the tools to endeavor a substantial reform of society, tackling both the connection between private and public right as the structure of cosmopolitan right. Regarding the first issue, Kant’s texts claim that certain social relations, such as those that make some individuals passive citizens and other active ones, endowed with the right to vote, impose limitations to the capacity of the omnilateral will of the State to provide legitimacy to individual properties. According to the second issue, only the Republican rule of all the peoples in the world seems to ensure a cosmopolitan unity of States, which is a consequence of the lack of coercion of Kant’s cosmopolitan right. I conclude that to appraise rightly the  relationship between theory and practice supported by Kant it is necessary to take into account these limitations of the causal efficacy of his juridical doctrine.