Published in:Western Political Science Association 2011 Annual Meeting Paper
Extent:
1 Online-Ressource (50 p)
Language:
English
Origination:
Footnote:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments April 19, 2011 erstellt
Description:
The paper critically reappraises Kant's conceptions of international law, moral universalism and cosmopolitan right. Although still providing some politically explosive claims, Kant runs into severe limits and antinomies. In different ways, this paper argues, these antinomies are reinforced by the new cosmopolitans such as Habermas and their conception of a morally grounded global constitutionalism from above. But they are also replicated in a conception of international law that rehabilitates absolute state sovereignty. Both set of principles restrict individual rights and collective autonomy at the very moment they design them. In particular, the paper reconstructs Arendt's and Adorno's critique of both liberal cosmopolitanism and state sovereignty, and it argues for a different, grounded cosmopolitanism that addresses the Kantian antinomies. Reflecting on the particular, and particular events in human history, the genocidal atrocities of the 20th century force us to develop a new categorical imperative and beyond the global public law-national sovereignty axis. The argument hereby turns to extrajudicial, vernacularized cosmopolitics that move beyond liberal cosmopolitanism's shortcomings. It is through particular forms of cosmopolitan agency and solidarity that universality survives