Two moments of the kantian cosmopolitanism

Abstract

In this article, I shall investigate two moments of the Kantian conception of cosmopolitanism. Firstly, how it appears in the Observations on the feeling of the beautiful and the sublime (1764), and then how it is taken up in the Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784). I argue that in these two texts there is a link between cosmopolitanism and history and that this link operates under the backing of special metaphysics. Attested by the speculative idea of wholeness, which belongs to Rational Cosmology, the articulation between cosmopolitanism and special metaphysics ends up evoking the Rational Theology, due to Kant’s use of the “nature” as the author of a plan oriented to accomplish the moral destination of mankind. After examining the status of theological arguments in the Observations and in the Idea of a Universal History, I try to to point out the changes in the Kantian conception of cosmopolitanism in these two wrtitings.