Global civic virtues

The counterpoint to a purely institutional theory of democracy, a theory of civic virtues, is known from Antiquity. Yet, it was developed only for individual states; the equivalent for a world republic is missing. While Plato and Aristotle do not even consider the idea, the Stoa does incorporate at least a degree of cosmopolitanism, but one scarcely concerned with juridical and political institutions. In addition, global civic virtues in the political sense are completely absent (see ch. 8.1). Even in Kant’s Perpetual Peace, they surface only sporadically and in a rather generalised manner. This follows because, for Kant, the everlasting peace is to be guaranteed primarily by the mechanisms of human inclination and self-interest. Kant refers only in a complementary way to an obligation that is part of the initial sense of global justice and the global rule of law, namely the duty to work towards a perpetual peace (Perpetual Peace, VIII, 368/336).