Gary Banham

In 1795 Immanuel Kant proclaimed that the peoples of the earth have entered into a "universal community". Since Kant wrote this the processes of inter-connection between the peoples of the earth has grown even more pronounced and the notion of "cosmopolitics" has thus come to seem a defining one for the contemporary age. As such this volume makes a timely contribution to contemporary debates about international law, global ecology and economy and transnational synergies. The volume is inter-disciplinary and is intended to be a contribution to a debate that crosses borders and disciplines

The general conception of Kantian cosmology in Universal Natural History is one that folds into the “pre-Critical” period in the basic sense that the status of the types of principles invoked within the work is not subjected by Kant to critical assessment. This is far from meaning that the enquiry of Universal Natural History is simply abandoned by Kant. Rather, the stakes of the inquiry into cosmology become transformed and this transformation has much to do with the results of the Critique of Pure Reason, not least the arguments of the Transcendental Dialectic. In this piece I will first review some of the most salient lines of argument in Universal Natural History prior to undertaking to investigate a reason for re-thinking cosmology in Kantian terms both within the Critique of Pure Reason and in the wake of it. This latter enquiry will hinge both on an understanding of the nature of Kant’s use of the notion of the “regulative idea” and also upon an investigation of his uses of cosmic images within the Critical period.