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Kant's political thought has experienced a resurgence in the English-speaking academic world. Spurred on by John Rawls' Theory of Justice (Schmidt 2003: 148),¹ Kant was resurrected in the most general sense in order to combat the behavioralist turn and re-introduce the question of the moral authority of the rational individual (see, for example, Booth 1986). However, a further radicalization of Kant proceeded by interpreting his enterprise as an exegesis of the philosophical and practical limitations of individual Reason (Shell 1980; Hutchings 1995; Flikschuh 2000). A number of authors have even used Kant to highlight the imperialistic undertones (both political and economic) in approaches that, through a reading of Kant, assume the universality of the liberal subject (O"Neill 1992; Beck 1999; Williams 2001; Jahn 2005).

DOI: 10.1057/9780230234154_3

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