A similar book is Reidar Maliks, Kant’s Politics in Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014, but it does not focus on international law. Pauline Kleingeld’s Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012 touches upon international relations, but is mainly a book on Kant’s cosmopolitanism, and a comparison with other 18c thinkers.

Human rights and the courts and tribunals that protect them are increasingly part of our moral, legal, and political circumstances. The growing salience of human rights has recently brought the question of their philosophical foundation to the foreground. Theorists of human rights often assume that their ideal can be traced to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and his view of humans as ends in themselves. Yet, few have attempted to explore exactly how human rights should be understood in a Kantian framework. The scholars in this book have gathered to fill this gap. At the center of Kant’s theory of rights is a view of freedom as independence from domination. The chapters explore the significance of this theory for the nature of human rights, their justification, and the legitimacy of international human rights courts.

Human rights can be understood as moral or political. This volume shows how this distinction matters for theory and practice.

Past interpreters of Kant’s thought seldom viewed his writings on politics as having much importance, especially in comparison with his writings on ethics, which (along with his major works, such as the Critique of Pure Reason) received the lion’s share of attention. But in recent years a new generation of scholars has revived interest in what Kant had to say about politics. From a position of engagement with today’s most pressing questions, this volume of essays offers a comprehensive introduction to Kant’s often misunderstood political thought. Covering the full range of sources of Kant’s political theory—including not only the Doctrine of Right, the Critiques, and the political essays but also Kant’s lectures and minor writings—the volume’s distinguished contributors demonstrate that Kant’s philosophy offers compelling positions that continue to inspire the best thinking on politics today. Aside from the editor, the contributors are Michaele Ferguson, Louis-Philippe Hodgson, Ian Hunter, John Christian Laursen, Mika LaVaque-Manty, Onora O’Neill, Thomas W. Pogge, Arthur Ripstein, and Robert S. Taylor.

In this famous essay, first published in 1793, Kant considers the alleged conflict between theory and practice in the conduct of human affairs in three widening contexts: those of the common person faced with a moral decision, of the politician and the citizen concerned with the extent and limits of political obligation, and, finally, of the citizen of the world whose actions have a bearing on war and peace among nations. Unlike other animals, Kant reminds us, people must decide how they will live their lives. They therefore ask for a guide to action, a set of principles—a theory. From the outset, Kant rejects the ancient claim that the practical possibilities of action cannot always be reconciled with moral demands. He offers his own moral theory, a theory starting out from the principle of the right as an unequivocal guide to action. In partial disagreement with the rival theories of Hobbes and Locke, he proposes that the only condition under which the individual can achieve true destiny as a person and a member of the human race is the civil state. Such a state can be secured only by law. Although "from such crooked wood as man is made of, nothing perfectly straight can be built," only the rule of law can bring about a stable society. Last, Kant turns to the relation between theory and practice in international relations. "Nowhere," he writes, "does human nature appear less lovable than in the relation of whole nations to each other." But to hope for world peace on the basis of "the so-called balance of power is a mere chimera." There is no other remedy to international lawlessness and war than an international coercive law, and such law can grow only out of sound theory. "I put my trust in theory. At the same time, I trust in the nature of things, and also take account of human nature, which I cannot, or will not, consider so steeped in evil that in the end reason should not triumph."

Why does Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) consistently invoke God and Providence in his most prominent texts relating to international politics? In this wide-ranging study, Seán Molloy proposes that texts such as Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent and Toward Perpetual Peace cannot be fully understood without reference to Kant’s wider philosophical projects, and in particular the role that belief in God plays within critical philosophy and Kant’s inquiries into anthropology, politics, and theology. Molloy’s broader view reveals the political-theological dimensions of Kant’s thought as directly related to his attempts to find a new basis for metaphysics in the sacrifice of knowledge to make room for faith.This book is certain to generate controversy. Kant is hailed as “the greatest of all theorists” in the field of International Relations (IR); in particular, he has been acknowledged as the forefather of Cosmopolitanism and Democratic Peace Theory. Yet, Molloy charges that this understanding of Kant is based on misinterpretation, neglect of particular texts, and failure to recognize Kant’s ambivalences and ambiguities. Molloy’s return to Kant’s texts forces devotees of Cosmopolitanism and other ‘Kantian’ schools of thought in IR to critically assess their relationship with their supposed forebear: ultimately, they will be compelled to seek different philosophical origins or to find some way to accommodate the complexity and the decisively nonsecular aspects of Kant’s ideas.

This book provides an innovative contribution to the study of the Responsibility to Protect and Kantian political theory. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine has been heralded as the new international security norm to ensure the protection of peoples against genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet, for all of the discussion, endorsements and reaffirmations of this new norm, R2P continues to come under fire for its failures, particularly, and most recently, in the case of Syria. This book argues that a duty to protect is best considered a Kantian provisional duty of justice. The international system ought to be considered a state of nature, where legal institutions are either weak or absent, and so duties of justice in such a condition cannot be considered peremptory. This book suggests that by understanding the duty’s provisional status, we understand the necessity of creating the requisite executive, legislative and judicial authorities. Furthermore, the book provides three innovative contributions to the literature, study and practice of R2P and Kantian political theory: it provides detailed theoretical analysis of R2P; it addresses the research gap that exists with Kant’s account of justice in states of nature; and it presents a more comprehensive understanding of the metaphysics of justice as well as R2P. This book will be of much interest to students of the Responsibility to Protect, humanitarian intervention, global ethics, international law, security studies and international relations (IR) in general.