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Kevin Thompson, Sovereignity, Hospitality, and
Commerce: Kant and Cosmopolitan Right, 16 JRE 305, 320
(2008)

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 Sovereignity, Hospitality, and Commerce:
Kant and Cosmopolitan Right

Kevin Thompson

Cosmopolitanism has come to occupy an important position in the landscape of

contemporary political thought. Just when the warring factions of the myriad forms
of globalization, fundamentalism, and nationalism are threatening to tear apart the
fabric of our common condition, the idea that all human beings are "citizens of the
world," and thus ought to enjoy a common set of rights and obligations, has once
again risen to prominence. The historical resources for this revival are, of course,
as deep as they are varied, and the legacies upon which they draw are exceedingly
complex and often unacknowledged. Yet, Kant's name stands out. For it is his
thought, above all others, that has served as the most fundamental of the tributaries
that have fed this current resurgence.' Oddly, though, it has been his moral concep-
tion of human equality, rather than his political cosmopolitanism - embodied, for
him, in the right of all "citizens of the earth", as he called them, to universal hospi-
tality - that has served as the reference point for the majority of contemporary the-
ories. 2 Even where his political conception has been taken up, his own attempts to
lay down a normative foundation for this new kind of right have generally been
neglected.
The aim of what follows is to contribute to the rectification of this important
deficit. It does so by examining the nature and justification of the right of universal

See Sharon Anderson-Gold, "Kantische Grundlagen des gegenwartigen Kosmopolitis-

mus," Deutsche Zeitschrift ffir Philosophie, vol. 53, no. 1 (2005): 97- 109.
2 For examples of this kind of approach, see Martha C. Nussbaum, "Patriotism and Cos-
mopolitanism," in For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, ed. Joshua Cohen
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 3 - 17; "Kant and Cosmopolitanism," in Perpetual Peace: Es-
says on Kant's Cosmopolitan Ideal, ed. James Bohman and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann (Cam-
bridge: The MIT Press, 1997), 25-57; and Thomas W Pogge, "Cosmopolitanism and Sover-
eignty," Ethics 103 (1992): 48-75.
3 Examples of this kind of approach include: Seyla Benhabib, "Another Cosmopolitan-
ism," in Another Cosmopolitanism, ed. Robert Post (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006),
13- 80; and Pheng Cheah, Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
It should be noted that Benhabib has sought to explore the justificatory foundations of
Kant's political cosmopolitanism, though mainly by reliance on the work of Katrin Flikschuh,
in her The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2004), chap. 1.
 Kevin Thompson

hospitality. In particular, I show that two distinct strands of argumentation - one

from the concept of freedom, the other from that of nature - lie at the core of
Kant's mature formulations of this doctrine. These strands converge, I contend, in
the concept of Verkehr, which I shall argue is best understood in the narrow sense
as commerce or trade. My thesis is thus that Kant's political cosmopolitanism is
rooted, not in his moral universalism, but in a specific form of market cosmopoli-
tanism. 4 The significance of this reading is that it exposes an important and abid-
ing tension in Kant's thought between his doctrine of cosmopolitan right and the
model of sovereignty to which his theory of the state is committed. The interpreta-
tion thus suggests that all those who would seek to embrace a truly Kantian form
of cosmopolitan thought must bear the burden of grappling with this inherent pro-
blematic as they seek to work out a genuinely comprehensive, humane, and global
theory of cosmopolitanism.
The paper is divided into three parts. The first reviews the basic development of
the doctrine of cosmopolitanism in Kant's thought, detailing the content of the
right of hospitality itself, and, from this, identifies the underlying tension between
cosmopolitanism and sovereignty that shapes Kant's account. The second part ex-
amines the arguments that Kant offers in support of this new right in "Zum ewigen
Frieden" and Die Metaphysik der Sitten. It demonstrates the pivotal role of Verkehr
in these justifications and shows (1) how the employment of this concept grounds
Kant's political cosmopolitanism in a form of market cosmopolitanism, and (2)
how this, in turn, places the conflict between cosmopolitan universality and terri-
torial particularity at the very center of Kant's project. Part three concludes with a
consideration of the problems that this issue poses for future attempts to appropri-
ate the Kantian legacy.
I.

As is well known, although Kant first publicly invoked the general concept of
cosmopolitanism in his early essay on history, "Idee zu einer allgemeinen Ge-
schichte in weltbiirglicher Absicht" [1784], and employed it again in the Kritik der
Urteilskraft [ 1790] and Part III of "Ober den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theo-
fie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht fiir die Praxis" [1793], the so-called "Theorie-
Praxis" essay, it was only in the mature works of just a few years later, in "Zum
ewigen Frieden" [1795] and Die Metaphysik der Sitten [1797], that he finally deli-
neated cosmopolitan right as a distinctly new kind of right. 5 A brief sketch of the

4 PaulineKleingeld offers a subtle exposition of the historical distinction between political

and market cosmopolitanisms in her "Six Varieties of Cosmopolitanism in Late Eighteenth-
Century Germany," Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 60, no. 3 (1999): 505-524.
The present essay stands in debt to Kleingeld's work here as it has enabled us to isolate a
form of market cosmopolitanism at work in Kant's thought, a thesis which is not Kleingeld's
own however.
5 All references to Kant's writings are included in the body of the text and cite the volume
and page number of Kants gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Kniglich Preullischen Akademie der
 Sovereignity, Hospitality, and Commerce: Kant and Cosmopolitan Right

main stages of this development will allow us to see the innovation that this new
concept represents as well as the way in which it is importantly intertwined in
6
Kant's thought with his conception of political authority.

1. Cosmopolitanism and Universal Security: 1784-1793

From the essay of 1784 through that of 1793, Kant defined what he called a
"universal cosmopolitan condition" as comprised of two domains: the right of a
state, which lays down the fundamental norms of rational political authority, that
is, the form of a rightful civil constitution, and international right, which sets out
the basic principles that are to govern relations between states (cf. Idee, VIII, 28;
Theorie-Praxis, VIII, 310 - 311).7
The argument that Kant offers to establish the binding authority of international
right - an argument he develops principally in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Propo-
sitions of the 1784 essay on history - is premised on an analogy between the re-
spective members of these domains, namely, individuals and states. Kant takes
there to be a parallel in the condition of individuals with respect to one another
outside the purview of a public authority and the relation of states to one another in
the absence of a governing body ruling over them. Both stand in a state of nature
and, as such, are outside the enforceability of right. Kant thus argues that just as
individuals have a duty to leave the state of nature and enter into civil society, the
condition of lawful freedom, so states too are obligated to exit the international
state of nature and have a duty to place themselves under the authority of a com-
mon governing body, with the concomitant right to compel others to act accord-
ingly. In both cases, the crucial idea is that outside a condition where right can be
enforced, any claims to ownership or entitlement of any kind can be, at best,
merely provisional. Hence, leaving the state of nature is demanded by the very con-
cept of right itself since this concept contains the notion of enforcement or the

Wissenschaften (Berlin: Reimer, subsequently, Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1900 et seq.) in ac-
cordance with the following scheme of abbreviation:
Idee "Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbiirglicher Absicht" [1784].
KU Kritik der Urteilskraft [1790].
Theorie-Praxis "Uber den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber
nicht flir die Praxis" [1793].
ZeF "Zum ewigen Frieden" [ 1795].
MdS Die Metaphysik der Sitten [1797].
6 For a somewhat broader account of the development of the concept of cosmopolitanism
in Kant's thought, see Reinhard Brandt, "Vom Weltbiirgerrecht," in Immanuel Kant. Zum
ewigen Frieden, ed. Otfried Hoffe (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004), 133 -148.
7 For a useful account of the development of cosmopolitan ideas in European thought in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Georg Cavallar The Rights of Strangers: The-
ories of International Hospitality, the Global Community, and Political Justice since Vitoria
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002).
 Kevin Thompson

authorization to use coercion. Insofar as a condition of insecurity obtains between

both individuals and states in the absence of a supreme governing authority, both
are thus required to place themselves under the purview of such an institution.
The nerve of the argument here lies in the concept of "unsocial sociability
(ungesellige Geselligkeit)": the propensity humans naturally possess to compete
amongst themselves for superior rank and status, a competition fueled by a craving
to distinguish one's self from others, to seek a form of recognition, even if at
others' expense (cf. Idee, VIII, 20-22). 8 Kant famously holds this idea to be the
regulative principle of the historical development of humans as a natural species.
Paradoxically, of course, this desire for individual supremacy is dependent pre-
cisely upon one's fellow human beings in order to achieve its end. As Kant aptly
puts it, unsocial sociability drives human beings "to seek status among his fellows,
whom he cannot bear (leiden) yet cannot leave (lassen)" (Idee, VIII, 21). Unsocial
sociability thus compels humans as a species towards conflict and it thereby ren-
ders any condition in which there is no governing authority to arbitrate disputes, be
it among individuals or among the states that they form, a condition of threat and
potential violence, a state of affairs in which there is no surety as to what is "mine
and thine". And yet, to attain the possibility of status, which unsocial sociability
drives us to seek, requires order and the guarantee of the enforcement of the rights
pertaining to free beings. Consequently, the very desire from which the conflict
arises that threatens to undermine social order also spurs individuals and states to
seek a condition of right. For individuals, this condition is a "completely just civil
constitution" (Idee, VIII, 22), while, for states, standing in the same situation with
respect to one another, this condition is a "system of united power," what Kant
terms a "cosmopolitan system of general political security" (Idee, VIII, 26).
Kant appeals to this same line of reasoning, albeit in less developed forms, in
§ 83 of the Kritik der Urteilskraft [ 1790] and in Part III of the Theorie-Praxis essay
[1793] in establishing the necessity of the constraints provided by, what he calls in
the former, a "cosmopolitan constitution" (Theorie-Praxis, VIII, 310) and, in the
latter, a "cosmopolitan whole" (KU, V, 432). In all, Kant clearly intends an interna-
tional institution possessing not only the authority to govern relations between its
members, according to the requirements of lawful freedom, but also the coercive
powers necessary to enforce its judgments. Without these powers, the development
of the human species as a whole, propelled as it is by its propensity to conflict,
would not be able to obtain the stability and security that it requires to continue its
progress. Admittedly, the precise structure of this institution remains ambiguous
during this early period - with Kant at times appearing to endorse a universal state,
while, at others, seeming to appeal to some form of federal system 9 - nonetheless,

8 On the concept of "unsocial sociability" and its role in Kant's theory of human history,
see Allen W Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999),
chaps. 6-7.
9 An excellent guide to the various approaches to this issue is provided by Sharon Byrd's
report on the Peace Conference held in honor of the 200th anniversary of the publication of
 Sovereignity, Hospitality, and Commerce: Kant and Cosmopolitan Right

he is adamant that the analogical status of individuals and states in the absence of
a governing body entails the necessity for an institution of appropriate scale to
reign over each.

2. Cosmopolitanism and UniversalHospitality: 1795-1797

The term 'cosmopolitan,' as Kant first employs it, thus denotes the scope of the
institution whose task is to set forth and enforce rightful relations in the comity of
nations that stand under its jurisdiction. It is a matter, wholly and exclusively, of
the breadth of this distinctly international form of authority, rather than of any
specific principles that derive from it. However, with the publication in 1795 of
"Zum ewigen Frieden," the concept begins to undergo a pivotal transformation. It
no longer refers simply to the jurisdictional scope of the international governing
body, but to a distinct and specific kind of norm, a right that derives, Kant argues,
from the very nature of authority of this breadth. This shift is marked by a change
in what one commentator has acutely called the "addressee" of this new form of
right.' 0 Whereas the cosmopolitan constitution of the texts prior to 1795 was said
to exercise authority over relations between states, and them alone, "Zum ewigen
Frieden" introduces the idea of a principle to govern rightful relations between
states and individuals, a "right of citizens of the world (Weltbiirgerrecht)," as he
calls it, where individuals are understood, for the first time in Kant's political
writings, as "citizens of a universal state of humankind," a "ius cosmopoliticum"
(cf. ZeF, VIII, 349n; MdS, § 43, VI, 311).
Under this new right, individuals, rather than the state or an international institu-
tion, are the bearers of a distinct set of protections and obligations. The specific
content of the right derives, accordingly, from the nature of the unique kinds of
relations over which this norm is to govern: interactions between individuals, as
citizens of the world, and the nation-states with whom they may come into contact
outside the bounds of protection afforded them as citizens of a specific state.
Hence, the basic concern of cosmopolitan right is with what Kant will call, in
Die Metaphysik der Sitten, the "community of possible physical interaction (Wech-
selwirkung) (commercium)" between individuals and states (MdS, VI, § 62, 352).
Kant announces this new right as the "conditions of universal hospitality," which
he defines as the right that a foreigner ought to enjoy "not to be treated with hosti-
lity because he has arrived on the land of another" (ZeF, VIII, 357-358), in "Zum
ewigen Frieden", or the "right of citizens of the earth (Erdbiirgers)to try to estab-

"Zum ewigen Frieden" at the Eighth International Kant Congress, "Perpetual Peace: A 20th
Century Project," in The Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress, Volume I,
Part 1: Sections 1 -2, ed. Hoke Robinson (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press,
1995), 343-358, esp. 351 -353; see also Georg Cavallar Kant and the Theory and Practice
of International Right (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999), chap. 8.
10 See Pauline Kleingeld, "Kant's Cosmopolitan Law: World Citizenship for a Global Or-
der," Kantian Review, vol. 2 (1998): 72 -90, esp. 74-75.
 Kevin Thompson

lish community with all and, to this end, to visit all regions of the earth" (MdS,
§ 62, VI, 353), as he expresses it in Die Metaphysik der Sitten. Cosmopolitan right
is fundamentally, then, a "right to visit (Besuchsrecht)" (ZeF, VIII, 358) under
which each individual is entitled to present himself for the purpose of engaging in
various kinds of exchange with other peoples and nations. The right of universal
hospitality is a right that grants and secures to each and to all the authority to
approach (Zugang), but it does not guarantee entry (Eingang)into the territory of
another state (cf. ZeF, VIII, 359; MdS, § 62, VI, 353).
Two important consequences follow from this new conception of cosmopolitan
right. On the one hand, the right to hospitality limits the claims of world-citizens to
access to foreign territories to, at most, presenting themselves for visitation. In both
"Zum ewigen Frieden" and Die Metaphysik der Sitten, Kant argues that if the right
granted permission actually to settle in another's country, then this would be a war-
rant for violating the sovereignty of the indigenous population. It would be an en-
titlement to conquer and take possession rather than simply to have access to another
society. Cosmopolitan right therefore offers a strident rejection of the most rudimen-
tary forms of colonialism (cf. ZeF, VIII, 358- 360; MdS, § 62, VI, 352- 353).11
On the other hand, since the right of hospitality only guarantees that the world-
citizen may offer to engage in interaction with any nation, but does not ensure the
individual that their offer will be accepted; the state to which they have presented
themselves bears no obligation to permit entry into its territorial borders. The right
to petition for access does not, in and of itself, require that it be granted. However,
Kant does famously set out an exception to this state prerogative: in those instances
where a state's denial of access would result in the "destruction (Untergang)" of the
applicant, as he puts it, the state is under an obligation to accept the petition (cf.
ZeF,VIII, 358). Now, of course, literally, this condition is invoked only if to refuse
the request would result in the death of the applicant. But if, as has been suggested,
Untergangcan be read here as referring more broadly to any form of incapacitating
harm, then cosmopolitan right can be said to include at least a nascent form12
of what
has later come to be acknowledged as the right of refugees to safe haven.
In sum, then, the cosmopolitan principle of hospitality, which Kant was only
able to formulate in the texts of 1795 and 1797, lays down a normative framework
within which individuals, as members of the universal state of humankind, that is,
as true citizens of the world, can engage in rightful forms of interaction with states
outside the boundaries of their own nations. But a profound problem - one that we
shall see goes to the very heart of Kant's political philosophy - lurks underneath
the innovations wrought by this new form of right.

I1On this point, see Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire (Princeton, NJ: Prince-
ton University Press, 2003), chap. 5; and Pauline Kleingeld, "Kant's Second Thoughts on
Race," The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 229 (2007): 573-592, esp. 586-592.
12 For this argument, see PaulineKleingeld, "Kant's Cosmopolitan Law: World Citizenship
for a Global Order," 76-77.
 Sovereignity, Hospitality, and Commerce: Kant and Cosmopolitan Right

3. The Underlying Tension

Consider that, as we noted above, the fundamental concept of right, for Kant,
analytically entails an authorization to enforce or coerce others to acknowledge
and abide by the norm in question. To hinder a hindrance to freedom is, he con-
tends, just to uphold the authority that right itself grants. This basic principle is
already operative in the writings before 1795, as we have seen, but it is explicitly
stated only in Die Metaphysik der Sitten in 1797 (cf. MdS, VI, 231-233). It fol-
lows from this doctrine that every kind of right necessarily requires some kind of
enforcement mechanism to promulgate and sustain it as a genuinely binding norm.
Right without enforcement is an empty chimera. We are thus naturally led to ask:
what is the form of enforcement by which the "conditions of universal hospitality"
are to be upheld?
To this clearly central question the Kantian text responds with a deafening si-
lence. Nowhere in the published works of the mature political philosophy, and cer-
tainly not in the accounts of cosmopolitan right, is there to be found any mention
of any kind of institutional structure that could serve this necessary function. One
might think that the "cosmopolitan system of general political security" (Idee,
VIII, 26), the international institution possessing coercive powers for which Kant
had argued in his earlier work, would here be reconceived to play this role. But in
both "Zum ewigen Frieden" and Die Metaphysik der Sitten, Kant claims that such
a body as this - what he variously terms a world federation of states, a world re-
public, or, simply, a state of states - stands as an ideal of reason that can only be
approached through the formation of a continually expanding league of states
(V6lkerbund, cf. ZeF, VIII, 354-357; MdS, § 61, VI, 350-351). Crucially, for our
concerns, he further argues in both texts that this intermediary institution, as well
as the idea of a republic itself, cannot possess coercive powers. The reasoning for
this conclusion is decisive: he now rejects the very analogy between individuals
and states in a state of nature that, as we saw, had previously served as the funda-
mental premise of his argument for an international governing body with appropri-
ate coercive powers. He writes, in "Zum ewigen Frieden," that:
what holds in accordance with natural right for human beings in a lawless condition, "they
ought to leave this condition," cannot hold for states in accordance with the right of nations
(since, as states, they already have a rightful constitution internally and hence have out-
grown the constraint of others to bring them under a more extended law-governed constitu-
tion in accordance with their concepts of right) (ZeF, VIII, 355 -356).

Though the nature of the argument is somewhat unclear, its core contention is
not. The similarity between individuals and states in a condition of lawlessness is
not sufficient to warrant the inference that both must place themselves under coer-
cive governing authorities. The line of reasoning to which Kant appears to be allud-
ing can be reconstructed in the following way: whereas forcing individuals to leave
the state of nature and enter into a civil condition is warranted because it is only
through this means that they are able to have right itself enforced, together with all
 Kevin Thompson

the protections that it affords, and, as a result, they are able to exercise their innate
right to external freedom, forcing states out of an international state of nature is
not because employing coercion against a state infringes its domestic sovereignty,
transgressing the most elementary principle of this form of supreme authority,
namely non-interference, a principle which Kant acknowledges in the Fifth Preli-
minary Article (cf. ZeF, VIII, 346).' 3 Exiting the natural condition enables indivi-
duals to be genuinely free, while it would violate the integrity of a state to be
forced from this same situation. The international league Kant endorses in the texts
of 1795 and 1797, can therefore only be a voluntary, rather than compulsory, asso-
ciation, what he calls, in Die Metaphysik der Sitten, a "permanent congress of
states (permanenten Staatenkongre3)," devoid of any coercive powers whatsoever
(cf.MdS, VI, § 61, 350).
Cosmopolitan right, on this reading, then, is normatively binding in name only.
It has neither its own specific institution of enforcement nor an international league
of states that could render its "right to visit" practically authoritative. Now, for
many, this issue - the problem of the institutionalization of cosmopolitan right -
has been taken to be little more than a paradoxical lacuna in Kant's thought in need
of only minor correction.' 4 But this, I think, is a deeply mistaken view for it over-
looks what is ultimately at stake here. The problem of institutionalizing cosmopoli-
tan right is a surface manifestation of a deeper tension that haunts Kant's mature
political philosophy throughout: the conflict between sovereignty and cosmopoli-
tanism. Cosmopolitan right, as a distinctive form of right, requires universal enfor-
cement of its entitlements. But the right of a state demands absolute authority over
its territories. The two forms of right thus stand in inevitable and, given Kant's the-
ory of sovereignty, irreconcilable conflict with respect to their jurisdictional
claims. To see the full breadth of this conceptual tension and, in particular, its rami-
fications for Kant's practical philosophy as a whole, we must turn from the genesis
and nature of the right of hospitality to its justification for it is only there that the
full contours of this conflict can be fully appreciated.

II.

In both "Zum ewigen Frieden" and Die Metaphysik der Sitten, Kant grounds the
principle of universal hospitality in two distinct, but congruent lines of argument:

13 1 here take issue with the reading of this controversial passage proposed by Pauline
Kleingeld, "Approaching Perpetual Peace: Kant's Defense of a League of States and his Ideal
of a World Federation," European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 3 (2004): 304-325,
esp. 306-311.
14 See, for instance, Matthias Lutz-Bachnann, "Kant's Idea of Peace ad the Philosophical
Conception of a World Republic," in Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant's Cosmopolitan Ideal,
ed. James Bohman and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, 59-77, esp. 68- 74; and Otfried H6ffe,
K6nigliche V6lker. Zu Kants Cosmopolitischer Rechts- und Friedenstheorie (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2001), chap. 11.
 Sovereignity, Hospitality, and Commerce: Kant and Cosmopolitan Right

one from freedom, the other from nature. Both ultimately reflect the underlying
tension between sovereignty and cosmopolitanism, so let us examine each in turn.
The argument from freedom, in both of its versions, takes its point of departure
from what Kant calls the original communal possession of the earth (cf. ZeF, VIII,
358; MdS, § 62, VI, 352). I1 For Kant, this is not an empirical concept - as it was,
for instance, in Grotius - but rather the rational a priori principle under which hu-
mans are able to exercise their freedom in the most basic sense: the acquisition of
land (cf. MdS, § 13, VI, 262). To do this, freely to acquire territory, presupposes
that everyone has the right to be wherever nature or chance puts them. Since the
earth that one must be assumed to possess is spherical, and thus joins all human
beings to one another, this a priori possession is necessarily communal.
In "Zum ewigen Frieden," Kant argues that this original possession authorizes
all human beings to make use of those portions of the earth that are uninhabitable
to approach one another to pursue interaction, but not to enter another nation with-
out permission. The key notion in this version of the argument is the idea that the
spherical shape that places humans near one another entails that the earth is held,
at least as an idea of reason, in rightful communal possession prior to the original
acquisition of land that divides the earth's surface into distinct territories. It follows
from this, Kant contends, that all human beings retain this common right to areas
that are uninhabitable, and thus, as he puts it, are, by definition, ownerless (herren-
lose), but are nonetheless traversable, such as the seas and deserts (cf. ZeF, VIII,
358). Each and every human being thus has the right to exercise their common
entitlement to make use of these expanses to approach nations other than their own
in order to pursue possible interaction (Verkehr), but they are not thereby entitled
to enter these territories without being granted permission to do so as these areas
have been acquired and are, as such, removed from the original communal owner-
ship (cf. ZeF, VIII, 358). The argument here thus turns on two central theses: (1)
that the original common possession of the earth is a rightful possession that is
retained as long as the territory or expanse in question has not been acquired, and
(2) that retaining this common ownership entitles all to the use of the lands or
waterways still unacquired to approach other nations to petition them for tempor-
ary visitation.
The argument Kant mounts in Die Metaphysik der Sitten, but two years later, is
significantly different, not in its conclusion, but in where it takes the initial pre-
mise. Original possession here is not rightful. It can not form a communio (the le-
gitimate condition of 'mine and thine,' cf. MdS, Rechtslehre, § 10, VI, 258) be-
cause rightful possession flows only from an act of acquisition, which is authorized
as an expression of an original contract, a civil constitution (cf. MdS, Rechtslehre,

15 On "original possession in common" as a rational concept, see Leslie A. Mullholland,

Kant's System of Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 218-220, and the
excellent treatment of this issue in Katrin Flikschuh, Kant and Modem Political Philosophy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), chap. 5.
 Kevin Thompson

§ 15, VI, 264-266), and the original possession of the earth in common is a result
of nothing other than an agent's necessarily physical entrance into the world and its
resultant occupation, as an embodied being, of a portion of the earth's terrain. The
original communal possession of the earth thus cannot, in and of itself, authorize
the usage or ownership of any of the earth's territories or waterways. Consequently,
under this version of the argument, the spherical shape of the earth means that all
human beings stand only in a community of possible physical interaction or inter-
course (Wechselwirkung) - "a thoroughgoing relation of each to all the others" -
a commercium rather than a communio (MdS, Rechtslehre, § 62, VI, 352). It fol-
lows, Kant argues, that, since no one has rightful possession of all of the earth, or
to any unacquired portion thereof, but only to that section of it that they have actu-
ally acquired, and, secondly, since everyone stands in a thoroughgoing relation to
everyone else, all inhabitants of this condition are entitled to visit other nations,
other acquired territories, for the purpose of engaging in transactions or commerce
(Verkehr) of various kinds, but they are not thereby authorized to settle these lands.
If we turn now to the argument from nature, we see that its concern is not with
the question of right, but rather with that of non-moral motivation. The question it
addresses is what we are entitled to ascribe to nature, under the regulative principle
of purposiveness (Zweckmaj3igkeit), that would not only facilitate the form of inter-
action described above, but actually compel human beings, as a whole, as a natural
species, to seek after it, to pursue it as their end and thus to embrace this political
framework. 16 In each text, Kant's answer is a combination of the physical layout of
the earth together with the threat posed by unsocial sociability.
In "Zum ewigen Frieden", the argument is that not only is the earth formed such
that it is generally inhabitable, its occupants have actually been dispersed across its
surface through armed conflict, resulting in the separation of peoples from one an-
other (cf. ZeF, VIII, 364-365). It is, thus, the "mutual self-interest" embodied in
the "spirit of trade (Handelsgeist)" and the "power of money (Geldmacht)" that
serves as the mechanisms that compel states to pursue and promote cosmopolitan
right (ZeF, VIII, 368). While, in Die Metaphysik der Sitten, it is precisely what ap-
pears most to separate states from one another, namely the seas, that are seen as
the "fortunate arrangements of nature (die gliicklichsten Naturanlagen)"that allow
the desire to pursue "commerce (Verkehr)" between states to take root and flourish
(MdS, Rechtlehre, § 62, VI, 352-353). Kant acknowledges that international trade
and commerce, and the deep interdependence that it fosters, "provides the occasion
for troubles and acts of violence in one place on our globe to be felt all over it"
(MdS, Rechtslehre, § 62, VI, 353). But he takes the threat of abuse posed by the
human propensity to conflict, along with the global damages it would now portend,

16 On the role of nature in the argument of "Zum ewigen Frieden," see Volker Gerhardt,
Immanuel Kants Entwurf "Zum ewigen Frieden": eine Theorie der Politik (Darmstadt: Wis-
senschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995), chap. 6, and Pierre Laberge, "Von der Garantie des
ewigen Friedens," in Immanuel Kant. Zum ewigen Frieden, ed. Otfried Hoffe, 149- 170.
 Sovereignity, Hospitality, and Commerce: Kant and Cosmopolitan Right

to be simply further incentive to establish the full breadth of security offered by a

cosmopolitan condition.
Now, on closer inspection, these lines of argument, from freedom and from nat-
ure, are not just congruent. They actually converge in the concept of commerce
(Verkehr). Kant makes this most clear in the formulation of the argument in Die
Metaphysik der Sitten. As we have seen, he contends there that since the original
common possession of the earth does not arise from an act of acquisition, it can
not be a legitimate candidate for rightful possession. Consequently, this rational
concept can only establish that all states, and, as a consequence, all human beings,
stand in a community of possible physical interaction (Wechselwirkung), the condi-
tion of commercium, not of communio.
The idea that humans may come into conditions of interrelation is not, in and of
itself, however, sufficient to warrant the claim that the rightful form that this inter-
action is to take is that of the exchange of property, that is, commerce, and thus that
all human beings are entitled to approach foreign societies and to be treated with
universal hospitality insofar as they come with offerings to engage in such transac-
tions. All that the possibility of physical interaction can establish is that humans
may - as a result of their being inhabitants of, as Kant so eloquently puts it, a "glo-
bus terraqueus" (MdS, Rechtslehre, § 62, VI, 352) - come into contact with one
another and so interact with their fellow beings. But this is only a general structure
of possible interrelation; it does not specify the content or nature of these relations.
Under possible physical interaction, these relations may take on a variety of differ-
ent forms, from studied indifference to violent conflict. In itself, the argument does
not even rule out conquest, or less severe forms of colonialism, as legitimate kinds
of physical interaction. In other words, the mere possibility of physical interaction
(Wechselwirkung) can not authorize a right to universal hospitality.
What does this - what sets in place a specific kind of relation that rules out brute
force and, in turn, requires universal hospitality - is Kant's substitution of com-
merce (Verkehr) for mere physical interaction (Wechselwirkung) in the argument.
He writes in Die Metaphysik der Sitten:
all nations stand originally in a community of land, though not of rightful community of
possession (commnio) and so of use of it, or of property in it; instead they stand in a com-
munity of possible physical interaction (Wechselwirkung) (commercium), that is, they stand
in a thoroughgoing relation of each to all the others of offering to engage in commerce
(Verkehr) with any other, and each has a right to make this attempt without the other being
authorized to behave toward it as an enemy because it has made this attempt (MdS, Re-
chtslehre, § 62, VI, 352).

The substitution of Verkehr for Wechselwirkung here is not, as it might at first

appear, an inconsequential variation of terms. With this shift a specific and deter-
minate concept, one possessing its own inherent kind of rationality and normative
requirements, intervenes in the line of argument from freedom and intertwines it
with the argument from nature. Now, to be sure, Verkehr does have a broad and a
 Kevin Thompson

narrow sense. It can refer widely to any form of communication or interaction. But
its scope can also be more restricted, denoting specifically commercial transac-
tions. Kant himself employs the term exclusively in this latter sense throughout
Die Metaphysik der Sitten, in discussions of the contractual exchange of property,
trade, money as the formal means of exchange, and iustitia commutativa as the
standard of exchange (cf. MdS, Rechtslehre, VI, 256, 286, 288-289, 297, 302,
& 331). His substitution of it for Wechselwirkung in the context of cosmopolitan
right thus sets in place two fundamental constraints: on the one hand, a utilitarian
conception of interaction between individual agents seeking to maximize their
self-interest (a form of economic rationality), and, on the other, a conception of
state authority whose function is to secure and facilitate such transactions (a form
of international sovereignty). From this point forward in the justification, it is these
conditions of rudimentary contractual transactions that thus define the nature of
global interaction. And this, in turn, allows the motivations underlying the argu-
ment from nature to come into play and drive the argument.
The "spirit of trade (Handelsgeist)"and the "power of money (Geldmacht)" ex-
press the desire, then, that humans have to gain a specific kind of ascendancy over
their fellow human beings, that born of the acquisition and ownership of property,
wealth, and luxury. Now, throughout his accounts of history as it relates to institu-
tions of right, Kant does endorse a version of the idea that the pursuit of self-inter-
est is ultimately the pursuit of mutual interest, that the infamous 'invisible hand' of
the market is continually at work transforming self-conceit into public good, as the
mechanism by which the unsocial sociability of history operates (cf. ZeF, VIII,
360-368). But the authorization to hold something regulatively to be a purposive
element of the natural world is not sufficient, on Kant's own grounds, to warrant
ascribing a normative status to it. And yet, that is precisely what occurs in the justi-
fication of cosmopolitan right. Kant establishes this right on the basis of the pre-
mise that it is part of the plan of nature, part of the purposiveness that we are war-
ranted in ascribing to it, that economic markets should become so intertwined, so
interdependent, that they eventually form a single global sphere of free trade. The
right of hospitality, the right of all citizens of the earth to visit all its regions, is thus
a principle that is justified not because it is a necessary condition of external free-
dom, and, as such, a necessary form of right itself, but because it satisfies the hu-
man desire to gain advantage in a subtle struggle for recognition, that of global
economic competition, a desire so powerful, according to Kant, that it can ulti-
mately trump even the human propensity to violence.

On the reading proposed here, then, the terrain of global commerce - defined by
economic reason and territorial sovereignty - is the site where the distinct strands
of argument that support cosmopolitan right become decisively intertwined. It is
here that the conditions of freedom and nature meet and authorize the right of uni-
versal hospitality. Kant's political cosmopolitanism is therefore rooted in a market
cosmopolitanism, one which has largely been left unacknowledged by commenta-
tors, instead of the more well-known moral cosmopolitanism of his doctrine of vir-
 Sovereignity, Hospitality, and Commerce: Kant and Cosmopolitan Right

tue. The recognition of the role played by the constraints of commerce in the justi-
fication of the right to visit allows us to see how this notoriously obtuse argument
works and, in particular, how the convergence of the arguments from freedom and
nature stands at the very core of this demonstration. But it also grants us more. It
makes clear just what is at stake in the tension between the global universalism of
cosmopolitan right and the territorial boundedness of state sovereignty that
underlies this fundamental right. For if cosmopolitan right is an entitlement that is
warranted only insofar as it enables international contractual transactions and trade
in goods and services, then does not this foundation undermine the very right it
vindicates? Does it not tie it to a model of territorial sovereignty that disallows this
right's enforcement?

III.

I want to conclude this examination of cosmopolitan right by setting out the con-
flict that underlies it in its most stark terms and briefly consider the import of the
interpretation proposed here for the current resurgence of cosmopolitan thought.
If, as we have sought to show, cosmopolitan right is grounded in the concept of
international commerce, and if this, in turn, is indeed tied to the model of territorial
sovereignty, then the justification of the right to hospitality can be said to under-
mine its enforceability. Cosmopolitan right, like any form of right, is vacuous un-
less it is enforceable. But the power to uphold right, the ability legitimately to use
force to hinder any hindrance to external freedom, is one of the core powers of
sovereign authority and such powers, on the model of supreme authority (maiestas)
that Kant endorses, can neither be distributed nor shared with any form of interna-
tional institution. The key here is Kant's acceptance of the thesis - derived origin-
ally, of course, from Bodin - that sovereignty is inherently indivisible, that is, that
the definitive powers of supreme authority over a given territory must be concen-
trated in a single officeholder or assembly, rather than allocated or jointly held be-
tween separate agencies.
Now it might seem that Kant's doctrine of republicanism - that the rational form
of a state requires a division between its legislative and executive powers - marks a
decisive departure from this legacy, that he was aligning himself with the tradition
of mixed constitutionalism, as is to be found in Besold, Frantzke, and, most fa-
mously, in Locke and Montesquieu, with its attendant allocation of powers among
different offices or branches (cf. ZeF, VIII, 349-353, MdS, Rechtslehre,§ 49, VI,
317-318). But, on closer inspection, this proves not to be the case.
In both "Zum ewigen Frieden" and Die Metaphysik der Sitten, Kant employs a
version of the distinction between the state, the essence of the commonwealth, and
its specific technique of governing, what he calls, in the earlier text, the form of
dominance or mastery (Beherrschung,forma imperii) and the form of government
(Regierung,forma regiminis) (cf. ZeF, VIII, 352), that had been developed from
Bodin's thought by German jurists in the early sixteenth century (Keckermann,
 Kevin Thompson

Kirchner, and Otto, in particular) precisely in order to secure the claim to indivisi-
bility against the apparent delegation of sovereign powers in the German Empire.17
On this distinction, the form of the state, its form of dominance, on Kant's render-
ing, is the unity of the state's powers, whether this be in a monarchy or an aristoc-
racy, while its art of rule, its form of government, is the arrangement of agencies
by which it specifically carries out its tasks. The jurists had contended that a
change in the latter, the accidental, counted for no change in the former, the sub-
stance. While Kant's position certainly modifies this view in holding that a genu-
inely rational arrangement requires a separation of executive and legislative
powers, he, at the same time, embraces the distinction and, as such, its underlying
commitment to the thesis of indivisibility. In Die Metaphysik der Sitten, he again
argues for the necessity of distinguishing the legislative and executive powers of
the state, but also demonstrates that all the powers of the state (legislative, execu-
tive, and judicial) must be coordinated with one another, subordinated to each
other, and, finally, united with each other in order for the state to be in compliance
with the fundamental principles of external right, that is to say, for the state to be
properly what it is (cf. MdS, Rechtslehre, § 48, VI, 316).18

We can thus now see that it was Kant's commitment to the principles of the indivi-
sibility and territoriality of sovereignty that convinced him that the coercive powers
of state authority could neither be allocated nor shared with any international body.
He, accordingly, reversed his earlier advocacy of this idea. But, if the reading pro-
posed here is correct, then the further implication that he failed to draw was that cos-
mopolitan right is rendered vacuous by virtue of this same line of reasoning.
A tension thus becomes evident here; one that has largely gone undetected, but
nonetheless reverberates throughout Kant's mature practical philosophy. The uni-
versalism of cosmopolitan right stands at odds with the particularism of state so-
vereignty. Paradoxically, this conflict, as we have seen, is lodged in the very heart
of Kant's theory of perpetual peace, the core of his political project. Just under the
surface of this conceptual apparatus, the expansionistic forces of the global market
and the recalcitrant protections afforded by territorial sovereignty continually vie
for supremacy. And though they are inextricably linked in Kant's thought, each
constantly threatens to undermine the other. All those who would seek to construct

17 On the derivation of Kant's distinction from that to be found in Bodin, see Wolfgang
Kersting, Wohlgeordnete Freiheit. Immanuel Kants Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1984), 275 -279.
For the history of the seventeenth century German debates about the nature of sovereignty
and the peculiarity of the Empire, see Hanns Gross, Empire and Sovereignty: A History of
the Public Law Literature in the Holy Roman Empire, 1599-1804 (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1973) and Julian H. Franklin, "Sovereignty and the Mixed Constitution:
Bodin and his Critics," in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450- 1700, ed. J. H.
Burns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 298- 328, esp. 309-328.
IS On the logical relationship of the three state powers, see Bernd Ludwig, Kants Rechts-
lehre (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1988), 159- 16 In.
 Sovereignity, Hospitality, and Commerce: Kant and Cosmopolitan Right

a truly global and humane form of cosmopolitanism and would do so by embracing

and furthering the Kantian legacy thus bear a twofold burden: (1) the problem of
justification: a new foundation for cosmopolitan right must be developed that
would remain distinctly political, a matter of right rather than of virtue, but would
nonetheless not be beholden to the principles of international commerce, which is
to say that a passageway from the establishment of the possibility of universal phy-
sical interaction (Wechselwirkung) to the recognition of a set of universal rights
must be worked out, and (2) the problem of enforceability: the conceptual structure
for an international institution with the requisite coercive powers to enforce these
rights must be constructed and this obviously requires building upon a quite differ-
ent model of sovereignty than the one upon which Kant himself relied, a federal
conception of state authority that would allow for the distribution or sharing of the
prerogatives of sovereignty internationally without sacrificing the security and pro-
tection that domestic sovereignty affords. It should be noted, however, that it is not
clear that such a model of shared governance would be compatible with the re-
quirements laid down by external right. To grapple with both of these problems in
this way is thus to root the current resurgence of cosmopolitanism more deeply in
one of its most profound conceptual sources and to discover there that fidelity to
the spirit of political cosmopolitanism requires us to move beyond the letter of its
original entanglements.

Zusammenfassung

Der vorliegende Aufsatz untersucht Kants Lehre vom Weltbilrgerrecht. Er zeigt,

dass zwei unterschiedliche Argumentationsstringe - einer stammt aus dem Begriff
der Freiheit, der andere aus dem der Natur - den Kern von Kants ausgereifter Fas-
sung dieser Lehre bilden. Diese Argumentationsstringe treffen sich in dem Begriff
des Verkehrs, der am besten in einem engen Sinn als Handel verstanden wird. Die
These dieses Aufsatzes ist es, dass Kants politischer Kosmopolitismus nicht, wie
so oft angenommen wird, seine Wurzeln in seinem moralischen Universalismus
hat, sondern vielmehr eine spezifische Form des Marktkosmopolitismus ist. Die
Bedeutung dieser Lesart besteht darin, dass sie eine wichtige und bleibende Span-
nung in Kants Gedanken freilegt, die zwischen der Lehre des Weltbtirgerrechts
und dem Modell der Souverdinitiit besteht, dem seine Staatstheorie folgt. Diese
Interpretation weist dabei darauf hin, dass jeder, der eine wahrhaft kantische Form
kosmopolitischen Denkens begriil3en wilrde, die Last tragen muss, sich mit diesem
inhirenten Problem auseinanderzusetzen, wenn er versucht, eine wahrhaft um-
fassende, humane und globale Theorie des Kosmopolitismus herauszuarbeiten.