John Zammito attacks Kant for bending over backwards to enlightened autocracy in Part Two of Conflict of the Faculties. Zammito calls for more creative exponents to explain how Kant's supposed advocacy of absolutism could possibly be “best.” This paper answers Zammito's request, explaining how Kant's view can be considered best by reading Kant's argument politically, in three senses of that term: the substance of Kant's argument is political in nature; its mode of argumentation should be read as politics-first, not ethics-first; and in light its publication history, Conflict's very publication should be viewed as a political act in its own right. Resituating the text and its argument shows Kant to be attacking absolutism, not defending it. As a subsidiary aim, the paper interprets the argument of Part Two of Conflict as exhibiting more internal unity than has previously been thought.

From an analysis of Kant’s states of nature in each division of the Doctrine of Right—the state of nature in general and the international state of nature—this paper reinterprets Cosmopolitan Right and the duty to exit the state of nature as more colonial than previously recognized. Kant places “savages” in the state of nature, depicting them and their lawless condition as bellicose. As such, states may force them to exit the state of nature; those who encounter hostile peoples on foreign lands may be justified in aggressing. Having shown that colonial features of the Doctrine of Right cannot be wrested from the text, this paper unsettles the interpretive dominance of the established view that Kant is staunchly anti-colonial. Nevertheless, anti-colonial features of the text remain. The paper shows that interpreters must accept that Kant’s text is both colonial and anti-colonial. Kant’s global vision remained too statist to appropriately include indigenous politics. The paper closes by briefly indicating a path for future research whereby contemporary Kantian cosmopolitan projects become more attuned to—and modified in light of—the political agency and particular struggles of indigenous peoples.