Since the end of the Cold War, the liberal theories of International Relations and the United Nations discourses have been invoking the authority of Immanuel Kant and his famous treatise “Perpetual Peace” to advance the idea about the connection between peace and liberal democracies. The article aims to bring forward an alternative reading of Kant vis-à-vis the mainstream literature of International Relations, pointing out the limits and ambiguities of Kant’s cosmopolitanism by rescuing the racist traits of his philosophy.
Kant; Enlightenment; Cosmopolitanism; Eurocentrism; Racism