The demands of external freedom: Kantian social contract theory and international right

The central thesis of Kant's political philosophy is that rational agents living side by side compromise one another's external freedom unless they are in a civil condition. In this dissertation, I provide a detailed argument in support of that thesis, and explore some of its main implications. I proceed in three parts.; In the first part, I present my argument for the central thesis. I begin by showing that individual rational agents have a right to freedom, and that this right can only be realized if they have enforceable property and contract rights against one another. I then argue that property and contract rights are only enforceable in a civil condition, since enforcing rights consistently with everyone's freedom is only possible under conditions of reciprocity, and realizing such conditions amounts to putting in place a state. Realizing the right to freedom and entering the civil condition therefore amount to the same thing.; In the second part, I show that the Kantian position supports Hobbes's claim that citizens necessarily authorize all their state's actions: following the central thesis, citizens must authorize these actions, since refusing to do so would undermine their own freedom. This idea in turn sheds light on the doctrine of the general will elaborated by Rousseau and Kant, since an agent whose actions are necessarily authorized by all citizens represents their general will. In this way, the central thesis provides a contractual justification of the state.; In the third part, I consider implications of the central thesis for international justice. I first argue that, as collective agents, states have a right to freedom that extends to all their legitimate actions. I then present an argument parallel to that of the first part to show that a state's right to freedom can only be realized in a civil condition, and therefore that it requires a world state. The required world state is federal in structure: its authority is restricted to regulating the relations among states. It therefore does not give rise to the worries about 'soulless despotism' voiced notably by Kant and Rawls.