Kant and Kuhn misunderstood

Submitted by Anne Julienne (Australia), Aug 17, 2010 at 17:26

It is simply not correct to state that Kant "advocates the abolition of nation-states". He merely pointed to the savagery of such states when their behaviour was not contained through international laws and an international body like the United Nations. Kant might, in fact, be worth revisiting because he advocated a federation of free states, what we'd call democratic states today. The UN is a mess precisely because its membership includes dictatorships, monarchies, and tyrants of all sorts. Hazony's sinister new paradigm is a straw man not worth the effort of fighting against. And under a Kuhnian narrative, a new scientific paradigm always replaces the old. So if a Kuhnian analysis is appropriate here, then Israelis and Jews should be learning to live with the new paradigm, not trying to resuscitate the old. As it happens, I think neither Kant nor Kuhn are relevant here.

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