Delphic Podcast by Michael R D James
Aug 23, 2026 · 8 min · 6 segments
Kant argues that there is a fundamental human right to roam the world and this fact requires from everyone the response of hospitality: a response based on the categorical imperative which demands…
Michael R. D. JamesHostI have argued elsewhere that Kant's Enlightenment philosophy provided the ethical foundations for human rights.
It can be further argued that Kant's article on a universal history provided the blueprint for the organisation which would, after the Second World War, become the United Nations, the champion of universal human rights.
Kant did not only have ethical arguments for the existence of these human rights, He also had arguments that are difficult to classify and which enable one to embrace the phenomena of globalization and immigration, positively, from a philosophical perspective.
One of Kant's basic arguments is that every human being on earth possesses a right to roam the earth and pursue their peaceful activities and the consequence of this cosmopolitan and global right is the right of everyone to expect hospitality, wherever they may roam.
In an earlier essay I spoke about how Kant viewed the nation-state as pathological, as did a number of other philosophers.
during a time in which it was not yet clear that the European nation-state system in Europe would bring actual devastation to the world.
Devastation firstly, in the form of two world wars and a holocaust, and secondly, in the form of threatened catastrophe on a scale never before witnessed or even imagined.
post-war nation-state alliances and enmities would for a long period of time promise to outdo the malevolent social engineering project of the Nazis with a nuclear holocaust which would threaten the very existence of the world.
That this latter phenomenon did not occur, in my view, may have been attributable to a deep process of globalization, a cosmopolitan attitude towards and knowledge of the world and its people which Kant expressed in his philosophy.
An attitude moreover, that can be defended with logic and sound and systematic argumentation which has philosophical consequences and that reverberate and resonate over the whole extent of our thought about everything, including the right we have to roam the earth.
I have argued elsewhere that Kant's Enlightenment philosophy provided the ethical foundations for human rights.
It can be further argued that Kant's article on a universal history provided the blueprint for the organisation which would, after the Second World War, become the United Nations, the champion of universal human rights.
Kant did not only have ethical arguments for the existence of these human rights, He also had arguments that are difficult to classify and which enable one to embrace the phenomena of globalization and immigration, positively, from a philosophical perspective.
One of Kant's basic arguments is that every human being on earth possesses a right to roam the earth and pursue their peaceful activities and the consequence of this cosmopolitan and global right is the right of everyone to expect hospitality, wherever they may roam.
In an earlier essay I spoke about how Kant viewed the nation-state as pathological, as did a number of other philosophers.
during a time in which it was not yet clear that the European nation-state system in Europe would bring actual devastation to the world.
Devastation firstly, in the form of two world wars and a holocaust, and secondly, in the form of threatened catastrophe on a scale never before witnessed or even imagined.
post-war nation-state alliances and enmities would for a long period of time promise to outdo the malevolent social engineering project of the Nazis with a nuclear holocaust which would threaten the very existence of the world.
That this latter phenomenon did not occur, in my view, may have been attributable to a deep process of globalization, a cosmopolitan attitude towards and knowledge of the world and its people which Kant expressed in his philosophy.
An attitude moreover, that can be defended with logic and sound and systematic argumentation which has philosophical consequences and that reverberate and resonate over the whole extent of our thought about everything, including the right we have to roam the earth.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
