Description
A Kantian approach in IR has come to be associated with principally a liberal IR. The call for a liberal grounding of IR, however, loses grasp of Kant’s grounding epistemology, and thus becomes a dogmatic enterprise in IR theory. I argue that Kantian approaches seeking to challenge Political Realism’s process of naturalising, unfortunately, relapse into dogmatism when they eventually seek totality for their theoretical proposition of “what we ought to do”, without proper treatment for Kant’s theory of knowledge. Hence, the essential problem Kantian IR is coping with concerns “the sources of normativity” and its justification. Accordingly, I propose that it is crucial for Kantian IR to take up the task of investigating its modus cognoscendi in a Kantian sense. My project takes up this challenge by revisiting John Rawls’ treatment for “the transcendental deduction” as the preferred standard for the reconstruction and application of Kantian thought in IR as a mode of enquiry and a site of politics.
