Tom Bailey

Contemporary global politics poses urgent challenges – from humanitarian, migratory and environmental problems to economic, religious and military conflicts – that strain not only existing political systems and resources, but also the frameworks and concepts of political thinking. The standard cosmopolitan response is to invoke a sense of global community, governed by such principles as human rights or humanitarianism, free or fair trade, global equality, multiculturalism, or extra-national democracy. Yet, the contours, grounds and implications of such a global community remain notoriously controversial, and it risks abstracting precisely from the particular and conflictual character of the challenges which global politics poses. The contributions to this collection undertake to develop a more fruitful cosmopolitan response to global political challenges, one that roots cosmopolitanism in the particularity and conflict of global politics itself. They argue that this ‘contestatory’ cosmopolitanism must be dialectical, agonistic and democratic: that is, its concepts and principles must be developed immanently and critically out of prevailing normative resources; they must reflect and acknowledge their antagonistic roots; and they must be the result of participatory and self-determining publics. In elaborating this alternative, the contributions also return to neglected cosmopolitan theorists like Hegel, Adorno, Arendt, Camus, Derrida, and Mouffe, and reconsider mainstream figures such as Kant and Habermas. This book was originally published as a special edition of _Critical Horizons. _.

This article contends that the first section of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals provides a sophisticated and valid argument, and that commentators are therefore mistaken in dismissing this section as flawed. In particular, the article undertakes to show that in this section Kant argues from a conception of the goodness of a good will to two distinctive features of moral goodness, and from these features to his?formula of universal law?. The article reveals the sophistication and validity of this argument by considering it in the light of a number of criticisms that are commonly levelled at the section. In conclusion, the article proposes that this interpretation of the section also has significant implications for the understanding of Kant's method, his formulas and his basic conception of the?moral?

Maurizio Ferraris’ Goodbye Kant! Cosa resta oggi della Critica della ragion pura has been a notable success in the field of popular philosophical writing in Italy. With refreshing irreverence and wit, the book mounts a sustained attack on the supposed confusions of Kant’s first Critique, and bemoans their influence on later philosophy. In particular, Ferraris argues that by attempting to found the necessary features of experience on physics, Kant confuses experience and ontology with science and epistemology and arrives at the implausible conclusion that our experience and knowledge, and perhaps even the existence, of things depend on how our minds are structured. Unsurprisingly, Goodbye Kant! has provoked strong reactions from Kant scholars. Alfredo Ferrarin’s Congedarsi da Kant? collects four particularly considered responses, along with a reply from Ferraris himself.

This paper takes issue with a natural, ‘moralising’ way of reading Kant’s Perpetual Peace – namely, as presenting and defending a conception of justice that the essay’s readers, as political agents committed to justice, are to act on and realize. Many commentaries read the essay in this way, as do many of the various strands in modern and contemporary political science and philosophy which consider the essay a major influence or precursor. But, although this way of reading the essay may be natural, in this paper I will argue that Kant is concerned to resist it. Furthermore, I will argue that this is so not only because, like many modern political philosophers, he holds that we are generally and naturally unjust in our political behaviour, such that we would not fulfil our political obligations were it not for state coercion. Rather, I will argue that Kant also holds that precisely those of us who claim to be committed to justice are in fact not genuinely so committed, such that our commitments to justice are hypocritically inconsistent with our actual political behaviour. Indeed, I will suggest that it is primarily for this more sophisticated reason that he resists a ‘moralising’ reading of the essay. More specifically, I will argue that in Perpetual Peace Kant treats three distinct kinds of hypocritical commitment to justice. First, he insists that we are generally insincere in our commitment to justice, in that we feign to others such a commitment in order to pursue our own ends. I will call this kind of hypocrisy ‘insincere.’ Second, Kant claims that when we are sincere in our commitment to justice we often convince ourselves that others’ unjust actions exempt us from the duty to act justly. I will call this ‘sophistical’ hypocrisy, following Kant’s own usage. Third, he claims that we often have a commitment to justice that is sincere, and yet nonetheless not genuine. I will call this third kind of hypocrisy ‘sincere.’ In support of reading Perpetual Peace as concerned with these three kinds of hypocrisy, I will examine the following passages. Beginning with the ‘nation of devils’ passage in the first supplement, I will show that there Kant presents us as manifesting an insincere commitment to justice, the insincere kind of hypocrisy. I will then consider his response to the sceptic in the first appendix, and argue that there he attributes to us the sophistical kind of hypocrisy, that with which we exempt ourselves from the duty to act justly by appealing to others’ injustice. I will then turn to three passages which present us as having a sincere commitment to justice that is not genuine: Kant’s discussion of rulers’ ‘just war’ claims in the main body of the essay, his argument for why ‘philosophers’ cannot be ‘kings’ in the second supplement, and his discussion of the publicity test of justice in the second appendix, a test that he treats as revealing all three kinds of hypocrisy. With regard to sincere hypocrisy, I will also propose that Kant’s conception of it can be best understood in terms of his insistence on the indeterminacy of reasons in the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals and elsewhere. Finally, I will consider two other elements of the essay which tell against ‘moralising’ readings, but which are presented in more detail elsewhere – namely, Kant’s conception of justice as a matter only of actions and not of reasons for action, as this is explained in The Metaphysics of Morals, and his conception of progress as a matter of what lies beyond our commitments and choices, as this is defended in The Critique of Judgement. In conclusion, I will briefly summarise the reading and the evidence presented for it, and make some brief remarks about its broader significance.

Although the study of religion and politics has blossomed over the past decade, the normative debates over the appropriate place of religion in modern democracies have often remain divorced from the study of the actual practices and meanings of religion in these democracies. Consequently, many new normative concepts and arguments have not filtered down to the empirical study of religion, while normative debates are often inadequately informed by an understanding of the empirical realities of contemporary religious practices and beliefs. This article aims to bridge this divide by focusing on the fertile case of political Catholicism in Italy and how it both exemplifies and challenges current empirical and normative theories of religious politics. We begin by reviewing recent “post-secular” normative theories of religious contributions to democratic consensus and the challenge that a “mono-religious” society like Italy appears to pose to these theories (section two). In response to this challenge, we then argue that, empirically, Italy is in fact neither secularizing nor mono-religious, but rather an illuminating example of what theorists have called a “post-secular” or “post-secularized” democracy. Although many scholars continue to analyze the religious and political landscape in Italy according to the secularization paradigm, we show that this paradigm obscures the most important features and trends of political Catholicism in Italy today (section three). In particular, it obscures the developing activism of the Vatican and other Catholic elites, Italian citizens’ persistent and complex religiosity, and the vital and plural Catholic politics that both trends have created (section four). We also show that by conceiving of Italian liberal democracy in secularist terms, Catholic elites themselves have failed to articulate these phenomena adequately, creating significant political stagnation (section five). In this light, we draw lessons for both Italian Catholic politics and post-secular normative theories. Specifically, we argue that a more constructive and pluralist Catholic politics could be articulated by borrowing from these theories, and, indeed, that many Catholic political claims are already articulated in appropriately post-secular ways. But we also show how, although Italy is certainly not a mono-religious society, certain forms of Catholic politics in Italy challenge the sense of democratic consensus that these normative theories presuppose. In this respect, we suggest that more qualified and minimal, while nonetheless post-secular, conceptions of liberal democratic politics may be required (section six).