“Circumstances of justice” define indeed “the conditions of our
possible agency,” as Flikschuh observes. Just as the facts that we
are all mortal beings, physically members of the same species
and afflicted by similar basic needs to assure our survival constitute
constraining conditions in our reasoning about justice,
so too the sphericality of the earth’s surface functions for Kant
as a limiting condition of “outer freedom.” This, I think, is
amply clear from Kant’s phrase, “So if the principle of outer
freedom limited by law is lacking in any of these three possible
forms of rightful condition . . .” (Kant [1797] 1922, 118). The
“principle of outer freedom” is the justificatory premise in the
argument which leads to the establishment of cosmopolitan
right. Since, however, exercising our external freedom means
that sooner or later, under certain circumstances, we will need
to cross boundaries and come into contact with fellow human
beings from other lands and cultures, we need to recognize the
following: first, that the earth’s surface will be apportioned into
the territory of individual republics;3 second, that conditions
of right regulating intra- as well as interrepublican transactionsare necessary; and finally that among those conditions are those
pertaining to the rights of hospitality and temporary sojourn.
In the next chapter I hope to show that a reconstruction of the
Kantian concept of the right to external freedom would lead
toamore extensive system of cosmopolitan right than Kant
himself offered us.