Abstract

This chapter proposes a return to early modern political thought to identify two traditional ways of conceiving the rights of foreigners: first, as revivals of the primitive community of possession of the Earth (the Grotian approach), and second, as correlates of our imperfect duty to allow others the innocent use of our goods (the Pufendorfian approach). It then shows how Kant’s cosmopolitan right departs from these natural law accounts, notably by disregarding considerations of innocent profit and necessity, and by reinterpreting the idea of common possession of the Earth. Finally, it argues that while Kant’s cosmopolitan right aims to protect individual freedom, it cannot be fully understood without acknowledging two fundamental aspects of the human condition: the ineluctability of global human interdependence and the vulnerability of the human embodied condition.