This paper examines whether Kant?s practical philosophy is applicable to contemporary circumstances of politics. In the first section, I outline the challenge we face when trying to define these circumstances by pointing to the growing importance of recognizing the democracy/autocracy dichotomy. In the second section, I examine five prominent interpretations of morality-politics relationship within Kant?s philosophy. To show where such interpretations fall short, in the third section I outline the puzzle of publicity - i.e. the problem of applying Kant?s demand for publicity in contemporary autocratic societies (or, more broadly, oppressive circumstances) - by showing how it may lead to self-censorship, rather than autonomous use of reason. I suggest that to fully grasp the applicability of Kant?s views within contemporary complexity of political issues and debates, we need to carefully consider the hierarchy of Kant?s views by analyzing their transcendentality, i.e. by finding which tenet presents a necessary condition for other tenets. Thus, in the fourth section I offer a comprehensive picture of Kant?s key ideas in politics and ethics, and I show which ideas are fundamental and how all of them need to be transcendentally ordered for us to be able to apply Kant?s political philosophy today.
Andrija Šoć (Thu,) studied this question.