Toward “free trade” from Kant's cosmopolitan ideal

Abstract

My dissertation aims to present a coherent Kantian justice in terms of Kant's publicity principle. The theoretical construction arises from inquiries about the case of China's soybean market shift after its accession to the WTO, and holds the practical aims of diagnosing injustices and prescribing individuals', states' and global institutions' responsibilities in rectifying injustices. Specifically, I advocate for publicity as negotiable consent, which could entail active citizenship and moral politicians. By appealing to publicity as negotiable consent, I argue that the Chinese soybean case involves injustice, and provide corresponding expansions of Kant's cosmopolitan right, republicanism, and a federalism of free states as conditions for justice. The puzzling relationship between the WTO and federalism of free states suggests the need to address connections between trade liberalization and cosmopolitan ideal. By appealing to the I-Ching, I present the dynamic balance of Yin and Yang as a model for the interaction between capital and labor in the context of global justice. The interdependent yin-yang indicates that the discrepancy between theoretical predictions from the WTO and empirical evidence in the Chinese soybean case has resulted from the WTO's neglect of mobility differentiations among the factors of production. At the end of my dissertation, an appropriate capital-labor relation prescribed by yin-yang leads to practical suggestions for the WTO. Emphasizing a mixture of bottom-up and top-down restrictions, both "publicity as negotiable consent" and yin-yang energize an account of Kantian justice as a dynamic theory which is continually responding to the uncertain, complicated, but practical issues.