To Cosmopolitism to-come

Kant’s and Derrida’s philosophy share an apocalyptic tone, not because they preach an imminent end, but because they hope for the future. Kant’s ‘philosophical chiliasm’ hopes for a kingdom of law, which is the occult telos of nature and a regulative idea of reason, which push us to act as if it were real. Derrida’s ‘messianic without messianism’ is the universal structure of existence, exposed to the perhaps of the event, which teleology and idealism cannot anticipate; it hopes for a kingdom of justice. Kant’s cosmopolitan system of world citizenship is a possible ideal to be implemented for “approximation”; Derrida’s democracy to-come is impossible, not because it is utopian, but because it can never be present; therefore, it will be necessary in every situation to ‘negotiate’ with justice. Kant limits cosmopolitan law to the conditions of a universal hospitality, Derrida thinks of an unconditional hospitality, which must inspire laws, while being incommensurable with respect to them. The Kantian ‘philosophical project’ returns to the fore in the age of globalisation, which is both a threat of world domination and a chance to democratise the world. Hence, Derrida, as an heir of the Enlightenment, deconstructs it, in the name of an-other cosmopolitics.