Kant and Political Philosophy

This paper discusses Kant's dealing with a fundamental of modern politics, that is concept of sovereignty, as well as its own capacity to reshape political order. Overcoming failures and fallacies that traditionally such a concept has maintained, Kant's political philosophy focuses on the way to reach international peace institutionally. Starting from the discuss of contradiction in sovereignty, the paper briefly analyzes the analogy between individuals and states; finally, core elements of Kant's cosmopolitan thought will be presented. Kant's project basically seeks to rewrite the early modern relation between politics and philosophy promoting republicanism, which is, mainly, a theory that shares state's powers and defends representation. Extending such a political way from domestic to a world domain, Kant's final solution for a World Republic implies a change of paradigm (though not completely espounded), by which modern sovereignty gets reassessed into a blended institutionalized coercion that emphasizes vertical power-sharing, so it realizes a cosmopolitan model of world order