LEGAL PROGRESS IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: INSTITUTIONS, LEGITIMATE COERCION, AND PERPETUAL PEACE

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.22533/at.ed.5585122530091

• Palavras-chave: Kant; law; philosophy of history; legal progress; cosmopolitanism; rule of law.

• Keywords: Kant; law; philosophy of history; legal progress; cosmopolitanism; rule of law.

• Abstract:

  This article examines Kant's philosophy of history based on the hypothesis that the "progress" it envisions is essentially legal, that is, the expansion and improvement of institutions and norms that make possible the coexistence of arbitrary powers under a universal law of freedom. Starting from the controversial context with Herder—whose cultural historicism relativizes universal ends—the text reconstructs Kant's path from theory to practice: from criticism of the limits of dogmatic metaphysics to the Metaphysics of Morals, where law is defined as a condition of external compatibility of freedoms. It is argued that history, conceived a priori as a regulative idea, finds in cosmopolitanism its normative horizon (perpetual peace, universal hospitality) and, in the rule of law, its mechanism for progressive realization. “Unsociable sociability” and the cunning of nature function as engines of development, requiring the transition from the state of nature to public law (social contract, general will, legitimate coercive legality). Historical progress, thus, is not measured by isolated internal virtues, but by the constitution of institutions capable of guaranteeing external freedom, equality, and legal security, even if by coercive means when necessary. It can be concluded that, in Kant, universal history is intelligible as a course of legal enforcement, in which normative guarantees and institutional structures that favor the practical autonomy of subjects and peoples are consolidated.