| Summary/Abstract |
Kant’s primary concern in writing on international relations is how to achieve ‘justice’ (Recht) between states. This means that instead of reading Kant as a theorist of peace or world government, as IR theorists have usually done, he is better read as a theorist international justice. His view of justice, which identifies it with a legal order that respects freedom as independence or nondomination, is broadly republican. But he equivocates on the possibility of justice at the international level, and this narrows what is usually seen as a wide gap between Kant’s thought and political realism. The paradox his uncertainty reveals is that it is wrong for states to remain in a lawless condition yet impossible for them to escape it so long as they remain independent. An international order cannot generate genuine law because there are no institutions to make, interpret, or enforce it. This means that states are entitled to determine their own foreign affairs. The gap between sovereignty and justice cannot be closed so long as these ideas are defined as they are within the state. The problem is not that a full, secure, and nonvoluntary system of justice that preserves the sovereignty of states is contingently unlikely. It is conceptually impossible. This conclusion poses a challenge to current theories of global justice.
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