This essay links Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant more closely in their politics and political theory through a shared, substantially similar debt to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. In particular, I argue that on some key political questions that are foundational to liberalism, they draw strikingly akin lessons from Smith and build on his ideas in a similar direction. That is, even otherwise very different strands of early liberalism find agreement on a constellation of ideas about trade, federalism, and peace. I show that these are not just preoccupations of Kant’s potentially idiosyncratic Perpetual Peace, but help define the whole political tradition.

In this article, the author examines the influence of Immanuel Kant’s philosophical ideas on Hans Kelsen’s early theory of international law. He situates Kelsen’s work within the post-World War I context, where Kant’s vision of perpetual peace significantly impacted the creation of international organizations. The article delves into Kelsen’s seminal work “Das Problem der Souveränität und die Theorie des Völkerrechts,” exploring how Kelsen’s pure theory of law parallels and diverges from Kant’s concepts. While Kelsen’s ideas were shaped by Kantian philosophy, particularly in promoting a lawful international order, Kelsen transcended Kant by developing a more rigorous, epistemologically grounded legal theory. The author argues that Kelsen’s adaptation of Kantian principles reflects both a continuation and transformation of Kant’s vision, tailored to the political and cultural challenges of early 20th-century Europe.

Luigi Caranti seeks to find a foundation for a contemporary theory of human rights in Kant, as well as contemporary relevance for his project of perpetual peace and his teleology of political progress. I agree with much of what he says, but provide a different account of Kant’s foundations for morality in general and human rights in particular, and defend my critique of Kant’s conception of a guarantee of progress from Caranti’s defence of Kant.

In recent decades a great deal of attention has been given to Kant’s writings on politics as presenting a possible path to lasting peace. In this literature too high an expectation is created over what Kant’s cosmopolitan thinking might achieve. Caranti’s book provides an excellent antidote to these speculations by spelling out clearly the implications of Kant’s peace theory. I suggest there may even be better ways for understanding the guarantee of perpetual peace, the role of religion and the ideal of the moral politician than Caranti maintains.

Revisionist historians have convincingly argued that Spanish American independence was not the result of simmering grievances that galvanised a national or Creole identity against Spain. Instead, this scholarship insists that Spanish American national identities did not exist at the time and that independence was an unforeseen process that must be understood in the context of the Napoleonic invasion of Iberia. But, if independence was undesirable before 1808 and if national identities arose at a latter period, how do we explain the early independence projects of ‘precursors’ like Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán? By contextually reconstructing the logic behind Viscardo's projects, this article offers a new perspective on the intellectual conditions of possibility for Spanish American independence. It argues that though he certainly identified as a Creole from Peru, Viscardo actually deployed an Enlightenment global science of commerce, not Creole patriotism or nationalism, to legitimate Spanish American independence.