Hostname: page-component-669899f699-g7b4s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-28T00:46:59.389Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nomads, Territory, and the Kantian State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2024

Anna Milioni Open the ORCID record for Anna Milioni [Opens in a new window]
Anna Milioni*
Affiliation:
Centre de recherche en éthique/Centre for Research in Ethics, University of Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada
*
Email: anna.milioni@umontreal.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper explores the ‘puzzle of the nomads’ in the Metaphysics of Morals: the apparent tension between Kant’s argument about the duty to leave the state of nature and his insistence that European colonizers cannot permissibly force nomads to enter a civil union. Arguing that the puzzle is twofold, I suggest that the answer lies in the relationship between the state and territory in Kant’s work. After showing the shortcomings of an approach which suggests that nomadic peoples cannot enter the civil state without settling, I defend an alternative interpretation, which conceives the territoriality of the state as contingent.

Keywords

territorynomadsstate of naturecivil statecolonialism
Type
Article
Information
Kantian Review , First View , pp. 1 - 15
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Kantian Review

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Alfred, Taiaiake (1999) Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Anghie, Antony (2006) ‘The evolution of international law: Colonial and postcolonial realities’. Third World Quarterly, 27(5), 739–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436590600780011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anghie, Antony (2007) Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Applbaum, Arthur Isak (2007) ‘Forcing a people to be free’. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 35(4), 359–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arneil, Barbara (1996) John Locke and America: the Defence of English Colonialism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byrd, B. Sharon, and Hruschka, Joachim (2010) Kant’s Doctrine of Right: A Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charters, Claire (2010) ‘A self-determination approach to justifying indigenous peoples’ participation in international law and policy making’. International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, 17(2), 215–40. https://doi.org/10.1163/157181110X495872.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Robin (2019) Migration: The Movement of Humankind from Prehistory to the Present. London: Andre Deutsch.Google Scholar
Coulthard, Glen (2014) ‘From wards of the state to subjects of recognition?: Marx, indigenous peoples, and the politics of dispossession in Denendeh’. In Simpson, Audra and Smith, Andrea (eds.), Theorizing Native Studies (New York: Duke University Press), 56–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deloria, Vine (2003) God is Red: A Native View of Religion. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing.Google Scholar
Flikschuh, Katrin (2000) Kant and Modern Political Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flikschuh, Katrin (2008) ‘Reason, Right, and Revolution: Kant and Locke’. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 36(4), 375–404. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1088-4963.2008.00146.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flikschuh, Katrin (2017a) ‘Kant’s nomads: Encountering strangers’. Con-textos Kantianos, 1(5), 346–48. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.805977.Google Scholar
Flikschuh, Katrin (2017b) What is Orientation in Global Thinking?: A Kantian Inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flikschuh, Katrin, and Ypi, Lea (eds.) (2014) Kant and Colonialism: Historical and Critical Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Getachew, Adom (2019) Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Huber, Jakob (2017) ‘No right to unilaterally claim your territory: on the consistency of Kantian statism’. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 20(6): 677–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2016.1196093.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, Jakob (2022) Kant’s Grounded Cosmopolitanism: Original Common Possession and the Right to Visit. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1996) Practical Philosophy. Trans. and ed. Mary, J. Gregor. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2007) Anthropology, History, and Education. Trans. and ed. Robert, B. Louden and Zöller, Günter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2017) The Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Gregor, Mary J., ed. Denis, Lara. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kleingeld, Pauline (2014) ‘Kant’s second thoughts on colonialism’. In Flikschuh, Katrin and Ypi, Lea (eds.), Kant and Colonialism: Historical and Critical Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 43–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleingeld, Pauline (2022) ‘On dealing with Kant’s sexism and racism’. In Caranti, Luigi and Pinzani, Alessandro (eds.), Kant and the Problem of Morality: Rethinking the Contemporary World (London: Taylor & Francis Group), 6–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muthu, Sankar (2000) ‘Justice and foreigners: Kant’s cosmopolitan right’. Constellations, 7(1), 23–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.00168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nichols, Robert (2020) Theft Is Property! Dispossession and Critical Theory. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Niesen, Peter (2007) ‘Colonialism and hospitality’. Politics and Ethics Review, 3(1), 90–108. https://doi.org/10.1177/1743453X0700300108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pagden, Anthony (2014) ‘The law of continuity’. In Flikschuh, Katrin and Ypi, Lea (eds.), Kant and Colonialism: Historical and Critical Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 19–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pahuja, Sundhya (2005) ‘The postcoloniality of international law’. Harvard International Law Journal, 46 (2), 459–69.Google Scholar
Ripstein, Arthur (2009) Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ripstein, Arthur (2019) ‘Political independence, territorial integrity and private law analogies’. Kantian Review, 24 (4), 573–604. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415419000323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ripstein, Arthur (2021) Kant and the Law of War. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spitzer, Aaron John, and Selle, Per (2020) ‘Is nonterritorial autonomy wrong for indigenous rights? Examining the “Territorialisation” of Sami power in Norway’. International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, 28(3), 544–67. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718115-28030005.Google Scholar
Stilz, Anna (2011) ‘Nations, states, and territory’. Ethics, 121(3), 572–601. https://doi.org/10.1086/658937.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stilz, Anna (2014) ‘Provisional right and non-state peoples’. In Flikschuh, Katrin and Ypi, Lea (eds.), Kant and Colonialism: Historical and Critical Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 197–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stilz, Anna (2019) Territorial Sovereignty: a Philosophical Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valdez, Inés (2017) ‘It’s not about race: Good wars, bad wars, and the origins of Kant’s anti-colonialism’. American Political Science Review, 111(4), 819–34. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055417000223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valdez, Inés (2019) Transnational Cosmopolitanism: Kant, Du Bois, and Justice as a Political Craft. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valdez, Inés (2022) ‘Toward a narrow cosmopolitanism: Kant’s anthropology, racialized character and the construction of Europe’. Kantian Review, 27(4), 593–613. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415422000358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waldron, Jeremy (2006) ‘Kant’s theory of the state’. In Kant, Immanuel and Kleingeld, Pauline (ed.), Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History (New Haven: Yale University Press), 179–200.Google Scholar
Weinrib, Jacob (2019) ‘Sovereignty as a right and as a duty: Kant’s theory of the state’. In Finkelstein, Claire and Skerker, Michael (eds.), Sovereignty and the New Executive Authority (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 22–46.Google Scholar