Fluent Essays

hello I want you to read two article and write a reading note. I want two pages.  The important thing is that you take a look and have a go at identifying some key points. Learning Portfolio Requirements Your notes must meet the following requirements: · They should be equivalent to at least 2 sides of A4 (font size 11-12) in total; · They should be of a sufficient standard to demonstrate that you have read and engaged with the readings; · They must be written in your own words (combined with any relevant quotations). Notes consisting predominantly of highlighted passages from readings or text cutand-pasted from the readings will not receive a mark; · Please note that your notes do not need to be written in full prose (i.e. like an essay). ( I Furor impius intus-fremit horridus ore sruento.” (Virgil.) * THIRD DEFINITIVE ARTICLE OF PERPETUAL PEACE .III.-aiThe rights o f men, as citizens o f the world, shall be limited to the conditions of universal hospitality.” We are speaking here, as in the previous articles, not o f philanthropy, but o f right; and in this sphere hospitality signifies the claim o f a stranger entering foreign territory to be treated by its owner without hostility. The latter may send him away again, if this can be done without causing his death; but, so long as he conducts himself peaceably, he must not be treated as an enemy. I t is not a right to be treated a s a guest to which the stranger can lay in the pride o f their independence to use the barbarous method of war, which after all does not really settle what is wanted, namely, the right o f each state in a quarrel. The feasts of thanksgiving during a war for a victorious battle, the hymns which are sung-to use the Jewish expression-“to the Lord of Hosts” are not in less strong contrast to the ethical ides of a father o f mankind; for, apart from the indifference these customs show to the way in which nations seek to establish their rights- sad enough as it is-these rejoicings bring in an clement of exultation that a great number o f lives, or at least the happiness of many, has been destroyed. * Cf. Atncidos, 1. a94 rcg. “Furor impius intus, Saeva sedens super arma, et centum vinctus ainis port tergum nodis. fremet horridus ore cruenio.” [l’r.] claim-a special friendly compact on his behalf would be required to make him for a given time an actual inmate-but he has a right of visitation. This right * to present themselves to society belongs to all mankind in virtue of our common right of possession on the surface of the earth on which, as it is a globe, we cannot be infinitely scattered, and must in the end reconcile ourselves to existence side by side: at the same time, originally no one individual had more right than another to live in any one particular spot. Uninhabitable portions o f the surface, ocean and desert, split up the human community, but in such a way that ships and camels --the ship of the desert make it possible for men to come into touch with one another across these unappropriated regions and to take advantage of our common claim to the face of the earth with a view to a possible intercommunication. The in- hospitality of the inhabitants of certain sea coasts -as, for example, the coast of Barbary-in plunder- ing ships in neighbouring seas or making slaves of shipwrecked mariners; or the behaviour of the Arab Bedouins in the deserts, who think that Cf. Vattel (op. (if., II. ch. IX. 8 123):--The right of passage is also a remnant of the primitive state o f communion, in which the entire earth was common to all mankind, and the passage Has every-hue free to each indiviclual according to his necessities. Nobody can be entirely deprived of this right. See also above, p, 65, notr. [Tr.] proximity to nomadic tribes constitutes a right to rob, is thus contrary to the law of nature. Thio right to hospitality, however-that is to say, the privilege of strangers arriving on foreign s o i l - d o e r not amount to more than what is implied in a permission to make an attempt at intercourse with the original inhabitants. In this way far distant territories may enter into peaceful relations with one another. These relations may at last come under the public control of law, and thus the hu- man race may be brought nearer the realisation of a cosmopolitan constitution. Let us look now, for the sake o f comparison, at the inhospitable behaviour of the civilised nations, especially the commercial states of our continent. The injustice which they exhibit on visiting foreign lands and races-this being equivalent in their eyes to conquest-is such as to fill us with horror. America, the negro countries, the Spice Islands, the Cape etc. were, on being discovered, looked upon as countries which belonged to no- body; for the native inhabitants were reckoned as nothing. In Hindustani under the pretext of in- tending to establish merely commercial depots, the Europeans introduced foreign troops ; and, as a result, the different states of Hindustan were stirred up t o far-spreading wars. Oppression of the natives followed, famine, insurrection, perfidy and all 140 Perjrtual Pearc - the rest of the litany of evils which can aftlict mankind. China * and Japan (Nipon) which had made an attempt at receiving guests o f this kind, have now * In order to call this great empire by the name which it gives itself-namely, China, not Sina or a word of similar sound-we have only to look at Georgii: A4ha6. Tibd., pp. 651-654, particularly noh b., below. According to the observation of Professor Fischer of St Petenburg, there is really no particular name which it always goes by: the most usual is the word Kin, iz. gold, which the inha- bitants o f Tibet call Srr. Hence the emperor is called the king of gold, i.t. the king of the most splendid country i n the world. This word K i n may probably be Chin i n the empire itself, but be pronounced Kin by the Italian missionaries on account o f the gutturals. Thus we see that the counhy of the Seres, w often lnentioned by the Romans, was China: the silk, however, waa despatched to Europe across Greater Tibet, probably through Smaller Tibet and Bucharia, through Persia and then on. This leads to many reflections as to the antiquity of this wonderful state, as compared with Hindustan, at the time of its union with Tibet and thence with Japan. On the other hand, the name Sina 01 Tschina which is said to be gi.ven to this land by neigh- bouring peoples leads to nothing. - Perhaps we can explain the ancient intercourse o f Europe with Tibet-a fact at no time widely known-by looking at what Hesychius has preserved on the matter. I refer to the shout, KGYE O ~ r a g ( K o n x Ompax), the cry of the Ilierophants in the Eleusinian mysteries (cf. TravcLE of Anarharsis the Younger, Part V., p. 447, stp.). For, according to Georgii A f f h . Tibet., the word Concioo which bears a striking resemblmce to Konx means G o d Pah-cia (id. p. 520) which might easily be pronounced by the Greeks like 901 means promulgator It+, the divine principle permeating natnre (called also, on p. 177, Cencrm). Om, however, which La Crow translates by bcnrdirtus, it. blessed, can when applied to the Deity mean nothing but beatified (p. 507). Now P. Franz. Horatius, when h e asked the Lhamas of Tibet, as he often did, what they understood by God (Conrioo) always got the answer :- Transtation 141 taken a prudent step. Only to a single European people, the Dutch, has China given the right of access to her shores (but not of entrance into the country), while Japan has granted both these con- cessions ; but at the same time they exclude the Dutch who enter, as if they were prisoners, from social intercourse with the inhabitants. The worst, or from the standpoint of ethical judgment the best, of all this is that no satisfaction is derived from all this violence, that all these trading com- panies stand on the verge of ruin, that the Sugar Islands, that seat of the most horrible and delib- “ i t is the assembly o f all the saints,” i. e. the assembly of those blessed ones who have been born again according to the faith of the Lama and, after many wanderings in changing forms, have at lut returned to God, to Burchane: that is to say, they are beings to be worshipped, souls which have undergone transmigratiou g. 223). So the mysterious expression K o n x O m f u r ought probably to mean the holy (KoAx), blessed, (Om) and wise (Par) Its flse in the Greek mysteries probably signified monotheism for supreme Being pervading the universe, the persooification o f nature. the Epoptes, in distinction from the polytheism of the people, dthough elsewhere P. Horatius scented atheism here. How that mysterious word came by way of Tibet to the Greeks may be aplained as above; and, on the other hand, in this way is made probable an early intercourse of Europe with China across Tibet, der perhaps than the communication with Hind-. ’6prg-ding to Liddell and Scott, a cormption of xdyk (There ir some difference o f opinion as to the meaning of the nor& drofus r i t . * K a n Y r inferences here seem to be more ban far- fetched. Lobeck, in his R p h p h a m u ~ @. 7 7 9 , g i v e r a quite di5ereat intupretstion which has, he says, betn rpproved by scholan. And w h w l y (Hub& D o d & re&riw lo Napolren Bonaponk, 3rd. ad, Postcript) rues K o a Ompas PI a pseudonym. p r . ] ) erate slavery, yield no real profit, but only have their use indirectly and for no very praiseworthy object-namely, that of furnishing men to be trained as sailors for the men-of-war and thereby contributing to the carrying on of war in Europe. And this has been done by nations who make a great ado about their piety, and who, while they are quite ready to commit injustice, would like, in their orthodoxy, to be considered among the elect. The intercourse, more or less close, which has been everywhere steadily increasing between the nations of the earth, has now extended so enor- mously that a violation of right in one part of the world is felt all over it. Hence the idea of a cos- mopolitan right is no fantastical, high-flown notion of right, but a complement o f the unwritten code of law-constitutional as well as international law-necessary for the public rights of mankind in general and thus for the realisation of perpetual peace. For only by endeavouring to fulfil the conditions laid down by this cosmopolitan law can we flatter ourselves that we are gradually approach- ing that ideal. 1 On hospitality: rereading Kant’s cosmopolitan right This chapter begins with an analysis of Kant’s understanding of cosmopolitan right. Kant’s discussion focuses on moral and legal relations which hold among individuals across bounded communities, and thereby demarcates a novel domain situated between the law of specific polities on the one hand and cus- tomary international law on the other. Katrin Flikschuh states this clearly: “Kant recognizes three distinct though related lev- els of rightful relation: the ‘Right of a State’ specifies relations of Right between persons within a state; the ‘Right of Nations’ pertains to relations of Right between states; and ‘the Right for all nations’ or ‘cosmopolitan Right’ concerns relations of Right between persons and foreign states” (Flikschuh 2000, 184). The normative dilemmas of political membership are to be localized within this third sphere of jus cosmopoliticum. “Perpetual Peace” and cosmopolitan right – a contemporary reevaluation Written in 1795, upon the signing of the Treaty of Basel by Prussia and revolutionary France, Kant’s essay on “Perpetual Peace” has enjoyed considerable revival of attention in recent years (see Bohman and Lutz-Bachmann 1997). What makes this essay particularly interesting under the current condi- tions of political globalization is the visionary depth of Kant’s project for perpetual peace among nations. Kant formulates 25Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others : Aliens, residents, and citizens. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from westminster on 2021-10-09 22:18:54. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 0 4 . C a m b ri d g e U n iv e rs ity P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . t h e r i g h ts o f ot h e r s three “definitive articles for perpetual peace among states.” These read: “The Civil Constitution of Every State shall be Republican”; “The Law of Nations shall be founded on a Fed- eration of Free States”; and “The Law of World Citizenship Shall be Limited to Conditions of Universal Hospitality” (Kant [1795] 1923, 434–446; [1795] 1994: 99–108).1 Much scholarship on this essay has focused on the precise legal and political form that these articles could or would take, and on whether Kant meant to propose the establishment of a world federation of republics (eine föderative Vereinigung) or a league of sovereign nation-states (Völkerbund). What remains frequently uncommented upon is the Third Article of “Perpetual Peace,” the only one in fact that Kant himself explicitly designates with the terminology of the Weltbürgerrecht. The German reads: “Das Weltbürgerrecht soll auf Bedingungen der allgemeinen Hospitalität eingeschränkt sein” (Kant [1795] 1923, 443). Kant himself notes the oddity of the locution of “hospitality” in this context, and therefore remarks that “it is not a question of philanthropy but of right.” In other words, hospitality is not to be understood as a virtue of sociability, as the kindness and generosity one may show to strangers who come to one’s land or who become depen- dent upon one’s acts of kindness through circumstances of nature or history; hospitality is a “right” which belongs to all human beings insofar as we view them as potential partic- ipants in a world republic. But the “right” of hospitality is 1 I have consulted several English translations of Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” essay, amending the text when necessary. For further information on these various editions, please consult the bibliography. The first date and page number refer to the German text, and the second to the English editions. 26Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others : Aliens, residents, and citizens. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from westminster on 2021-10-09 22:18:54. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 0 4 . C a m b ri d g e U n iv e rs ity P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . o n h o s p i ta l i t y odd in that it does not regulate relationships among individ- uals who are members of a specific civil entity under whose jurisdiction they stand; this “right” regulates the interactions of individuals who belong to different civic entities yet who encounter one another at the margins of bounded communi- ties. The right of hospitality is situated at the boundaries of the polity; it delimits civic space by regulating relations among members and strangers. Hence the right of hospitality occupies that space between human rights and civil rights, between the right of humanity in our person and the rights that accrue to us insofar as we are members of specific republics. Kant writes: “Hospitality [Wirtbarkeit] means the right of a stranger not to be treated as an enemy when he arrives in the land of another. One may refuse to receive him when this can be done without causing his destruction; but, so long as he peacefully occupies his place, one may not treat him with hostility. It is not the right to be a permanent visitor [Gastrecht] that one may demand. A special contract of beneficence [ein . . . wohltätiger Vertrag] would be needed in order to give an outsider a right to become a fellow inhabitant [Hausgenossen] for a certain length of time. It is only a right of temporary sojourn [ein Besuchsrecht], a right to associate, which all men have. They have it by virtue of their common possession [das Recht des gemeinschaftlichen Besitzes] of the surface of the earth, where, as a globe, they cannot infinitely disperse and hence must finally tolerate the presence of each other” (Kant [1795] 1923, 443; cf. 1949, 320). Kant distinguishes the “right to be a permanent visitor,” which he calls Gastrecht, from the “temporary right of sojourn” (Besuchsrecht). The right to be a permanent visitor is awarded through a freely chosen special agreement which 27Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others : Aliens, residents, and citizens. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from westminster on 2021-10-09 22:18:54. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 0 4 . C a m b ri d g e U n iv e rs ity P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . t h e r i g h ts o f ot h e r s goes beyond what is owed to the other morally and what he is entitled to legally; therefore, Kant names this a wohltätiger Vertrag, a “contract of beneficence.” It is a special privilege which the republican sovereign can award to certain foreigners who abide in their territories, who perform certain functions, who represent their respective political entities, who engage in long-term trade, and the like. The droit d’aubaine in pre- revolutionary France, which granted foreigners certain rights of residency, the acquisition of property, and the practicing of a profession, would be a pertinent historical example. The special trade concessions that the Ottoman empire, China, Japan, and India granted westerners from the eighteenth century onward would be others. The Jews in premodern Europe, who after their persecution through the Inquisition in Spain in the fifteenth century, spread to the north, to Holland, Britain, Germany, and other territories, would be another major group to whose status both the right of hospitality and that of permanent visitorship would apply. The right of hospitality entails a claim to temporary residency which cannot be refused, if such refusal would involve the destruction – Kant’s word here is Untergang – of the other. To refuse sojourn to victims of religious wars, to victims of piracy or ship-wreckage, when such refusal would lead to their demise, is untenable, Kant writes. What is unclear in Kant’s dis- cussion is whether such relations among peoples and nations involve acts of supererogation, going beyond the call of moral duty, or whether they entail a certain sort of moral claim con- cerning the recognition of “the rights of humanity in the person of the other.” 28Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others : Aliens, residents, and citizens. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from westminster on 2021-10-09 22:18:54. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 0 4 . C a m b ri d g e U n iv e rs ity P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . o n h o s p i ta l i t y We may see here the juridical and moral ambivalence that affects discussions of the right of asylum and refuge to this day. Are the rights of asylum and refuge “rights” in the sense of being reciprocal moral obligations which, in some sense or another, are grounded upon our mutual humanity? Or are these rights claims in the legal sense of being enforceable norms of behavior which individuals and groups can hold each other to and, in particular, force sovereign nation-states to comply with? Kant’s construction provides no clear answer. The right of hos- pitality entails a moral claim with potential legal consequences in that the obligation of the receiving states to grant temporary residency to foreigners is anchored in a republican cosmopo- litical order. Such an order does not have a supreme executive law governing it. In this sense the obligation to show hospital- ity to foreigners and strangers cannot be enforced; it remains a voluntarily incurred obligation of the political sovereign. The right of hospitality expresses all the dilemmas of a republi- can cosmopolitical order in a nutshell: namely how to create quasi-legally binding obligations through voluntary commit- ments and in the absence of an overwhelming sovereign power with the ultimate right of enforcement. But what exactly is Kant’s justification for the “temporary right of sojourn”? Why does this claim bind the will of the republican sovereign? When reflecting on the “temporary right of sojourn” (Besuchsrecht), Kant uses two different premises. One premise justifies the right of tem- porary sojourn on the basis of the capacity of all human beings (allen Menschen) to associate – the German reads sich zur Gesellschaft anzubieten (Kant [1795] 1923, 443). The other 29Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others : Aliens, residents, and citizens. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from westminster on 2021-10-09 22:18:54. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 0 4 . C a m b ri d g e U n iv e rs ity P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . t h e r i g h ts o f ot h e r s premise resorts to the juridical construct of a “common pos- session of the surface of the earth” (gemeinschaftlichen Besitzes der Oberfläche der Erde) (ibid.). With respect to the sec- ond principle, Kant suggests that to deny the foreigner and the stranger the claim to enjoy the land and its resources, when this can be done peacefully and without endanger- ing the life and welfare of original inhabitants, would be unjust. The juridical construct of a purported common pos- session of the earth, which has a long and honorable antecedent in old European jurisprudence, functions as a double-edged sword in this context. On the one hand, Kant wants to avoid the justificatory use of this construct to legitimize western colo- nialist expansion; on the other hand, he wants to base the right of human beings to enter into civil association with one another upon the claim that, since the surface of the earth is limited, at some point or other, we must learn to enjoy its resources in common with others. To understand the first of Kant’s worries, recall here John Locke’s argument in The Second Treatise of Civil Govern- ment. “In the beginning God gave the earth to men in common to enjoy” (Locke [1690] 1980, 19). The earth is a res nullius, belonging to all and none until it is appropriated; but to argue that the earth is a common possession of all human beings is, in effect, to disregard property relations historically existing among communities that have already settled on the land. The justification of the claim to property thus shifts from the his- torical title that legitimizes it to the modes of appropriation whereby what commonly belongs to a community can then be appropriated as “mine” or “thine.” 30Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others : Aliens, residents, and citizens. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from westminster on 2021-10-09 22:18:54. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 0 4 . C a m b ri d g e U n iv e rs ity P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . o n h o s p i ta l i t y Through a patently circular argument, Locke main- tains that private property emerges through the fact that the means of appropriation are themselves private: “the labor of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are prop- erly his . . . this nobody has any right to but himself ” (ibid.). In the context of European expansion to the Americas in the seventeenth century, Locke’s argument served to justify the colonial appropriation of the land precisely with the claim that the earth, being given to all “in common,” could then be justi- fiably appropriated by the industrious and the thrifty, without harming existing inhabitants and, in fact, for the benefit of all (Tully 1993). Kant explicitly rejects the res nullius thesis in its Lock- ean form, seeing in it a thinly disguised formula for expro- priating non-European peoples who do not have the capacity to resist imperialist onslaughts (Kant [1795] 1994, 107; see also Muthu, 1999, 2000). He supports the Chinese and the Japanese in their attempt to keep European traders at a distance. What does the premise of the “common possession of the earth” really justify, then? Once the earth has been appropriated, oth- ers no longer have a claim to possess it. Existing property rela- tions must be respected. If so, every community has the right to defend itself against those who seek access to its territo- ries. Apart from the assurance that turning away the ones who seek hospitality would not cause “their destruction” – admit- tedly itself a vague formulation – the dire needs of others do not constitute sufficient grounds to bend the will of existing sovereign communities. The claim to the “common possession of the earth” does disappointingly little to explicate the basis of cosmopolitan right. 31Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others : Aliens, residents, and citizens. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from westminster on 2021-10-09 22:18:54. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 0 4 . C a m b ri d g e U n iv e rs ity P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . t h e r i g h ts o f ot h e r s The sphericality of the earth and cosmopolitan right In Kant and Modern Political Philosophy, Katrin Flikschuh argues that the original common possession of the earth, and in particular the limited spherical character of the earth (der Erdkugel), plays a much more fundamental role in Kant’s justification in cosmopolitan right than I am claiming that it does. Flikschuh’s argument is worth considering in some detail. Flikschuh bases this reading not on Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” essay but on his Rechtslehre, the first half of Die Meta- physik der Sitten (The Metaphysics of Morals). Two passages are of special relevance here: The spherical surface of the earth unites all the places on its surface; for if its surface were an unbounded plane, men could be so dispersed on it that they would not come into any community with one another, and community would then not be a necessary result of their existence on the earth. (Kant [1797] 1922, 66; as quoted in Flikschuh 2000, 133)2 Since the earth’s surface is not unlimited but closed, the concepts of the Right of a state and of a Right of nations lead inevitably to the Idea of a Right for all nations (ius gentium) or cosmopolitan Right (ius cosmopoliticum). So if the principle of outer freedom limited by law is lacking in any of these three possible forms of rightful condition, the framework for all others is unavoidably underdetermined 2 Since there are some subtle discrepancies between various English editions and Flikschuh’s translations, I have kept references to her versions of the relevant passages. 32Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others : Aliens, residents, and citizens. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from westminster on 2021-10-09 22:18:54. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 0 4 . C a m b ri d g e U n iv e rs ity P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . o n h o s p i ta l i t y and must finally collapse. (Kant, [1797] 1922, 117–118; as quoted in Flikschuh 2000, 179) Without delving into details of discrepancies which may exist between the “Perpetual Peace” essay and Kant’s more difficult and fuller discussion in The Metaphysical Elements of Justice, for my purposes the most important question is this: does Kant mean to derive or deduce cosmopolitan right from the fact of the sphericality of the earth’s surface? What is the status of this fact in Kant’s moral argument? If indeed we were to assume that Kant used the sphericality of the earth as a jus- tificatory premise, wouldn’t we then have to conclude that he had committed the naturalistic fallacy? Just because all castles everywhere are built on sand, it still does not follow that mine should be so built as well. Likewise, just because I must, some- where and at some point, come into contact with other human beings and cannot flee them forever, this does not imply that upon such contact I must treat them with the respect and dig- nity to be accorded every human being. Flikschuh does not maintain in fact that the spher- icality of the earth’s surface is a justificatory premise: “The earth’s spherical surface is that empirical given space for pos- sible agency within which human beings are constrained to articulate their claims to freedom of choice and action . . . To the contrary, the global boundary constitutes an objective given, unavoidable condition of empirical reality within the limits of which human agents are constrained to establish possible relations of Right” (2000, 133). The spherical surface of the earth constitutes a circumstance of justice but does not function as a moral justificatory premise to ground cosmopolitan right. 33Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others : Aliens, residents, and citizens. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from westminster on 2021-10-09 22:18:54. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 0 4 . C a m b ri d g e U n iv e rs ity P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . t h e r i g h ts o f ot h e r s “Circumstances of justice” define indeed “the conditions of our possible agency,” as Flikschuh observes. Just as the facts that we are all mortal beings, physically members of the same species and afflicted by similar basic needs to assure our survival con- stitute constraining conditions in our reasoning about justice, so too the sphericality of the earth’s surface functions for Kant as a limiting condition of “outer freedom.” This, I think, is amply clear from Kant’s phrase, “So if the principle of outer freedom limited by law is lacking in any of these three possible forms of rightful condition . . .” (Kant [1797] 1922, 118). The “principle of outer freedom” is the justificatory premise in the argument which leads to the establishment of cosmopolitan right. Since, however, exercising our external freedom means that sooner or later, under certain circumstances, we will need to cross boundaries and come into contact with fellow human beings from other lands and cultures, we need to recognize the following: first, that the earth’s surface will be apportioned into the territory of individual republics;3 second, that conditions of right regulating intra- as well as interrepublican transactions 3 I am foregoing here a consideration of the considerable difficulties of Kant’s justification of property rights. Kant’s dilemma appears to have been the justification of the private apportionment of the earth’s surface without recourse to originary acts of occupation, since the latter, in Kant’s view, establish not a condition of right but rather of might. Nevertheless, Kant finds it necessary to resort to such an argument. “This postulate can be called a permissive principle [lex permissiva] of practical reason, which gives us authorization that could not be got from mere concept of Right as such, namely to put all others under an obligation which they would not otherwise have, to refrain from using certain objects of our choice because we have been the first to take them into our possession” (Kant [1797] 1922, 49). The lex permissiva holds not only within individual republics but also across republics. In the light of this stipulation, we also 34Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others : Aliens, residents, and citizens. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from westminster on 2021-10-09 22:18:54. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 0 4 . C a m b ri d g e U n iv e rs ity P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . o n h o s p i ta l i t y are necessary; and finally that among those conditions are those pertaining to the rights of hospitality and temporary sojourn. In the next chapter I hope to show that a reconstruction of the Kantian concept of the right to external freedom would lead to a more extensive system of cosmopolitan right than Kant himself offered us. The contemporary relevance of Kant’s concept of “temporary sojourn” Kant’s claim that first entry cannot be denied to those who seek it if this would result in their “destruction” (Unter- gang) has become incorporated into the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees as the principle of “non-refoulement” (United Nations 1951). This principle obliges signatory states not to forcibly return refugees and asylum seekers to their coun- tries of origin if doing so would pose a clear danger to their lives and freedom. Of course, just as sovereign states can manipu- late this article to define life and freedom more or less narrowly when it fits their purposes, it is also possible to circumvent the “non-refoulement” clause by depositing refugees and asylees in so-called safe third countries. Kant’s formulations clearly fore- saw as well as justified such balancing acts as between the moral obligations of states to those who seek refuge in their midst and see that the claim that only the republican sovereign can grant permanent visitation rights is based on the right of the republican sovereign to control “privately” a portion of the “common possession” of the earth’s surface. Bounded territoriality is thus made a precondition of the exercise of external freedom by Kant. Indeed, the recognition of “rightful borders” is essential if perpetual peace among nations is ever to be achieved. 35Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others : Aliens, residents, and citizens. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from westminster on 2021-10-09 22:18:54. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 0 4 . C a m b ri d g e U n iv e rs ity P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . t h e r i g h ts o f ot h e r s to their own welfare and interests. The lexical ordering of the two claims – the moral needs of others versus legitimate self- interest – is vague, except in the most obvious cases when the life and limb of refugees would be endangered by denying them the right of entry; apart from such cases, however, the obliga- tion to respect the liberty and welfare of the guest can permit a narrow interpretation on the part of the sovereign to whom it is addressed, and need not be considered an unconditional duty. The universal right to hospitality which is due to every human person imposes upon us an imperfect moral duty to help and offer shelter to those whose life, limb, and well-being are endangered. This duty is “imperfect” – i.e., conditional – in that it can permit exceptions, and can be overridden by legit- imate grounds of self-preservation. There is no obligation to shelter the other when doing so would endanger one’s own life and limb. It is disputed in moral philosophy as to how widely or narrowly the obligation to the other should be interpreted,4 and it is equally controversial how we should understand legit- imate grounds of self-preservation: is it morally permissible to turn the needy away because we think that they are altering our cultural mores? Does the preservation of culture constitute a legitimate basis of self-preservation? Is it morally permissible 4 Cf. Henry Sidgwick: “. . . but those who are in distress or urgent need have a claim on us for special kindness. These are generally recognized claims: but we find considerable difficulty and divergence, when we attempt to determine more precisely their extent and relative obligation: and the divergence becomes indefinitely greater when we compare the customs and common opinions now existing among ourselves in respect of such claims, with those of other ages and countries” (Sidgwick [1874] 1962, 246). For some recent treatments, see O’Neill 1996; Sheffler 2001. 36Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others : Aliens, residents, and citizens. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from westminster on 2021-10-09 22:18:54. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 0 4 . C a m b ri d g e U n iv e rs ity P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . o n h o s p i ta l i t y to deny asylum when admitting large numbers of needy peo- ples into our territories would cause a decline in our standards of living? And what amount of decline in welfare is morally permissible before it can be invoked as grounds for denying entry to the persecuted, the needy, and the oppressed? In for- mulating …