From Colonialism to Cosmopolitanism

Kant and the forgotten Legacy of Early Modernity

Abstract

Indeed, a relationship between Kant and the Late-Renaissance or Proto-Modern Iberian thinkers (taken here collectively under the name of “Iberian School of Peace”) is not documentable by a direct knowledge or even an indirect influence. However, something of the thinking of these Iberian philosophers and theologues passed, through the teaching and works of Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez, to some modern philosophers, such as Grotius and Pufendorf, and, through theses, also to Christian Wolff, Emmerich Vatel, and Immanuel Kant. Thus, my aim is to identify some topics that embodied Kant’s idea of ius cosmopoliticum and try to recognize its essential correspondence with some ideas advanced by those Iberian thinkers. The thesis I propose is that, with his idea of ius cosmopoliticum, Kant recovers and develops within a new juridical architecture, the essential of what, in those thinkers, was understood to be the inalienable natural rights of men, of peoples, of mankind, which should inspire all juridical-political order, be it in the sphere of each State, or in the sphere of international relations between Peoples and States.