Kant’s Philosophy: Social Contract, Cosmopolitan Law, and Freedom
Social Contract Theory
Social contract, in various philosophical theories, refers to the covenant, agreement, or contract by which people hypothetically decided to create a civil state (social, legal, peaceful), leaving the natural and semi-wild state they supposedly lived in before. For Kant, the social contract was probably the first moral obligation people adopted long ago, leaving the state of nature and seeking peace, justice, and freedom (moral and legal), which are only possible in a civil state. Other contractarian theories include those of Hobbes, Rousseau, Pateman, Rawls, and Buchanan. If a person or group of persons is subjected and bound to others by force, it cannot be deemed that a pact or social contract has been brokered, but rather that it was imposed by brute force. This power imposed on others by force cannot give rise to any rights.
Cosmopolitan Law
Cosmopolitan law, for Kant, is that body of law governing relations between states and citizens, considered as members of a global human community. According to Kant, cosmopolitan law should be limited to conditions of universal hospitality; that is, everyone has the right to visit any place in the world and not be treated badly for being a foreigner. This is also called the “right of access” or “movement” around the globe. According to Kant, we can oppose a foreigner taking possession of our territory but never visiting it. The meaning of this is to consider that the Earth belongs to everyone, to all of humanity. This, under the law of world citizenship, aligns with the cosmopolitan Enlightenment. Whoever violates cosmopolitan law is the one who harasses from abroad, who is inhospitable to strangers (xenophobia). The relationships between individuals and states as members of a world community give us the right to global citizenship. Kant believed that a cosmopolitan law, as stated, was a prerequisite for lasting global peace.
Juridical Freedom
Juridical freedom (legal freedom) is, along with equality and independence, one of the essential characteristics of a citizen of a state. Legal freedom means not obeying any law to which we have not previously given our consent. The citizen must be a co-legislator. The legal concept of freedom does not express civil disobedience, as Kant defended it in his time, although it might seem so from the very definition of the word.
Kant’s Copernican Turn
Kant’s Copernican turn explains the change in his philosophy regarding the design of knowledge, based on an analogy with the Copernican revolution in astronomy. Copernicus realized that he could not understand the motion of celestial objects with the view that the Earth is at the center of the universe, with the Sun and other celestial objects revolving around it. He realized that to understand the movement of celestial objects, it was necessary to change the relationship, placing the Sun at the center and the Earth revolving around it. Kant’s philosophy is deemed similar to a Copernican revolution. In philosophy, the problem is to explain synthetic a priori knowledge. Philosophy before Kant supposed that in the experience of knowing, the knower is passive; the object known influences the subject, causing a true representation. With this explanation, we can understand, in any case, empirical knowledge, but not a priori knowledge. The latter is special because with it we can know some things before experiencing them, that is, before they may affect our mind. Kant proposes to reverse the relationship and accept that in cognitive experience, the knowing subject is active; in the act of knowing, the knower changes the known reality. According to Kant, we can understand synthetic a priori knowledge if we deny that we submit to things, if we accept that things must be submitted to us. For an object to be seen, it first has to abide by the conditions of possibility of all possible experience, that is, the formal a priori structure imposed by our cognitive faculties. It is possible to know some of the features that it must have when it is present before us, precisely the features that depend on these conditions. For example, a priori we cannot know if the figure that we will see on the board is a triangle, or the contingent features of that figure (such as its size, its concrete form, etc.). But we know a priori that if it is a triangle, it must possess all the properties described by geometry because, according to Kant, they are an outgrowth of the peculiar structure of our minds, and any object that can be experienced must submit to them. Kant summarizes these ideas with the following sentence: “We can only know a priori of things that which we have previously placed in them.” In short, the Copernican revolution refers to the fact that we can only understand a priori knowledge if we admit that we only know phenomena, not things in themselves or noumena, if we admit Transcendental Idealism as the true philosophy.