Startseite Philosophie Is Humanity (Morally) Progressing? Kant’s Philosophy of History under a Cosmopolitan Perspective
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Is Humanity (Morally) Progressing? Kant’s Philosophy of History under a Cosmopolitan Perspective

  • Claudio Corradetti

    Claudio Corradetti is Associate Professor in Political Philosophy at the University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’. In addition to Kant’s and Machiavelli’s political philosophy, he has worked extensively on human rights, transitional justice and the tradition of the Frankfurt School. Some among his publications include: Kant and the Idea of Progress, Cambridge University Press (in press); “Was Kant a Cosmopolitan Racist?”, Kant Studien 115 (4), 2024, pp. 454–471; C. Corradetti, “Machiavelli’s Pendulum: Political Action, Time and Constitutional Change”, Philosophy & Social Criticism 50 (10), pp. 1541– 1563; Relativism and Human Rights. A Theory of Pluralist Universalism, Springer, Dordrecht, 2nd ed., 2022; Kant, Global Politics and Cosmopolitan Law. The World Republic as a Regulative Idea of Reason, Routledge, London-New York, 2020. He co-edited the anthology Theorizing Transitional Justice, Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot UK, 2015.

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Abstract

What is Kant’s view on progress? In Kant, there appears to be a link between natural and moral purposiveness, on the one side, and the instantiation of legal-political cosmopolitanism, on the other side. The result of this connection is straightforward: the more humankind develops rational inclinations, the more it tends towards institutional arrangements promoting cosmopolitan values. History provides evidence of this: the French revolution was indeed an event generating in observers a disinterested sense of sympathy and a moral sense of humanity and commonwealth. While Kant did not embrace a determinist conception of evolution, he considered that biological and political attainment of the moral standard occurs in stages. This is a cognitively thinkable process and a plausible hope to have: indeed, it represents a historically realizable aim.

Abstract

What is Kant’s view on progress? In Kant, there appears to be a link between natural and moral purposiveness, on the one side, and the instantiation of legal-political cosmopolitanism, on the other side. The result of this connection is straightforward: the more humankind develops rational inclinations, the more it tends towards institutional arrangements promoting cosmopolitan values. History provides evidence of this: the French revolution was indeed an event generating in observers a disinterested sense of sympathy and a moral sense of humanity and commonwealth. While Kant did not embrace a determinist conception of evolution, he considered that biological and political attainment of the moral standard occurs in stages. This is a cognitively thinkable process and a plausible hope to have: indeed, it represents a historically realizable aim.

Heruntergeladen am 8.10.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111707426-005/html
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