Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs*

Abstract

This chapter highlights the differences between liberal practice toward other liberal societies and liberal practice toward nonliberal societies. It argues that liberalism has achieved extraordinary success in the first and has contributed to exceptional confusion in the second. By republican Kant means a political society that has solved the problem of combining moral autonomy, individualism, and social order. Most pertinently for the impact of liberalism on foreign affairs, the state is subject to neither the external authority of other states nor to the internal authority of special prerogatives held. Republican representation and separation of powers are produced because they are the means by which the state is “organized well” to prepare for and meet foreign threats and to tame the ambitions of selfish and aggressive individuals. Liberal economic theory holds that these cosmopolitan ties derive from a cooperative international division of labor and free trade according to comparative advantage.

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