The Failure of Kant’s Cosmopolitan Project: Allopoiesis, Discursive Indeterminacy, and the Crisis of Global Jurisdiction

Abstract

This article examines the crisis of Immanuel Kant’s cosmopolitan project in light of contemporary phenomena of deconstitutionalization and the fragmentation of International Law. The investigation takes as its starting point the Kantian tripartite architecture (Law od State, the Law of Nations, and Cosmopolitan Law) to contrast it with the systemic pathologies identified by Marcelo Neves’ theory. It demonstrates that International Law undergoes a process of allopoiesis, being colonized by political and economic logics that block its functional autonomy and its capacity for operative differentiation. Complementarily, it employs Martti Koskenniemi’s critique of the argumentative structure of international law to highlight how the oscillation between the apology for power and moralist utopia hollows out the integrity of global legal discourse. Finally, it revisits Hans Kelsen’s diagnosis regarding the lack of compulsory jurisdiction as the fundamental technical obstacle to overcoming the state of nature among nations. The article concludes that the restoration of perpetual peace requires overcoming the dogma of absolute sovereignty and reaffirming the systemic autonomy of Law against unilateral power politics.