Immanuel Kant’s The Conflict of the Faculties (1798) contains a footnote in which four utopian states are mentioned — Atlantis, Utopia, Oceana, and Severambia. This passage has largely gone unnoticed in Kant scholarship. In her essay “Kant on Utopia”, Prof. Dr. Karoline Reinhardt examines this neglected passage and brings to light the previously underexplored relationship between Kant and utopian literature. She investigates the significance of utopian literature for Kant’s philosophy of history and his political thought. In doing so, she argues that Kant’s reflections on these utopian constructions mirror his philosophical plea for gradual progress through state reforms rather than revolutionary upheavals.
Link to the online publication: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ejop.70044