Common Possession of the Earth and Cosmopolitan Right
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Alice Pinheiro Walla
Abstract:
Common possession of the earth was a prominent idea in seventeenth-century modern philosophy. In this paper I will argue that Kant not only provides a secularized version of common possession of the earth but also radically departs from the conception of his natural law theory predecessors. I argue that Kant’s account of cosmopolitan right seeks to address the same problem as Grotius’ right of necessity, namely the implausibility of assuming inflexible acquired rights when this would go against the rationale for introducing these rights. However, while Grotius intended to excuse violations of private property in cases of necessity, Kant restricts his discussion to the right of host peoples to reject entrants in their territory. I show that in Kant’s account, to deny life-saving occupation of space to another being who is in principle just as entitled as anyone else to any place of the earth is to contradict the very justification for the territorial rights of states. This is because the permission to control territory and the right of the involuntary visitor to be admitted are based on the same legal foundation or Rechtsgrund, namely, the original community of the earth.
Acknowledgement
The work on this article was enabled by the ERC Advanced Research Project Distortions of Normativity at the University of Vienna.
© De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Special Issue Freedom and Coercion. Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy
- Editorial
- Abhandlungen
- Right’s Complex Relation to Ethics in Kant: The Limits of Independentism
- The Twofold Morality of Recht: Once More Unto the Breach
- Kant on Democracy
- Kant’s Political Philosophy as a Theory of Non-Ideal Normativity
- Enactable and Enforceable: Kant’s Criteria for Right and Virtue
- “A Community of Rational Beings”. Kant’s Realm of Ends and the Dinstinction between Internal and External Freedom
- Common Possession of the Earth and Cosmopolitan Right
- Just War, Regular War, and Perpetual Peace
- Buchbesprechungen
- Motivationen für das Selbst. Kant und Spinoza im Vergleich. Hrsg. von Anne Tilkorn
- Karl Leonhard Reinhold: Gesammelte Schriften. Kommentierte Ausgabe. Hrsg. von Martin Bondeli. Bd. 1: Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens. Hrsg. von Martin Bondeli und Silvan Imhof. Basel 2013.
- Giuseppe Motta: Die Postulate des empirischen Denkens überhaupt
- Christoph Gottfried Bardili. Kleine Schriften zur Logik. Mit Einleitung und ausführlichem textkritischem Kommentar herausgegeben von Rebecca Paimann.
- Mitteilung
- Prämierung von Studienabschlussarbeiten durch die Freiburger Kantstiftung
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Special Issue Freedom and Coercion. Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy
- Editorial
- Abhandlungen
- Right’s Complex Relation to Ethics in Kant: The Limits of Independentism
- The Twofold Morality of Recht: Once More Unto the Breach
- Kant on Democracy
- Kant’s Political Philosophy as a Theory of Non-Ideal Normativity
- Enactable and Enforceable: Kant’s Criteria for Right and Virtue
- “A Community of Rational Beings”. Kant’s Realm of Ends and the Dinstinction between Internal and External Freedom
- Common Possession of the Earth and Cosmopolitan Right
- Just War, Regular War, and Perpetual Peace
- Buchbesprechungen
- Motivationen für das Selbst. Kant und Spinoza im Vergleich. Hrsg. von Anne Tilkorn
- Karl Leonhard Reinhold: Gesammelte Schriften. Kommentierte Ausgabe. Hrsg. von Martin Bondeli. Bd. 1: Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens. Hrsg. von Martin Bondeli und Silvan Imhof. Basel 2013.
- Giuseppe Motta: Die Postulate des empirischen Denkens überhaupt
- Christoph Gottfried Bardili. Kleine Schriften zur Logik. Mit Einleitung und ausführlichem textkritischem Kommentar herausgegeben von Rebecca Paimann.
- Mitteilung
- Prämierung von Studienabschlussarbeiten durch die Freiburger Kantstiftung
