A realistic solidarity: Immanuel Kant’s legacy for modern Europe

This chapter examines how solidarity has a specific meaning for Immanuel Kant. According to his philosophy, people are limited by nature and need each other’s assistance in every moment of their lives. For the German philosopher, solidarity also has an ethical meaning, in accordance with the formulations of the categorical imperative expressed in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. There is, thus, a kind of duality in Kant’s political philosophy, since it pays attention to the concreteness of the experience, while simultaneously focuses on an ideal of perfection. This ‘utopian realism’, evident in the Kantian discourse about cosmopolitanism, is most evident in the Perpetual Peace, where the author speaks of a right of hospitality that must be recognized to everyone in a foreign State. Thus, Kant’s approaches to the theme of solidarity offer a fundamental perspective to face its current challenges: solidarity among Member States within the EU and, in a period of mass migrations, solidarity towards citizens of non-EU States.