Kant's Critique of Hobbes

In Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes lays out the theoretical basis of the Westphalian interstate order – dominant in European politics from the treaty of Westphalia in 1648 until the end of the Second World War – in which sovereign, staunchly independent national states compete against each other for power and influence. For Hobbes the subjects of the successful state in this system must be thoroughly united under an absolutist sovereign. In opposition to Hobbes, Immanuel Kant develops a theory of international and cosmopolitan right, in which state sovereignty is matched by a gradually developing world federation of peaceful states. In this way, Kant opposes Hobbes’s materialist moral theory with a moral theory based on both self and the community. This study examines the relationship between the two thinkers, demonstrating the viable alternative to Hobbes’s orthodoxy found in Kant’s political writings; it also shows how Kant anticipates the development of a worldwide political order, and suggests that through Kant’s political philosophy the sovereignty of the people in