Kant in the Land of Extraterrestrials: Cosmopolitical Philosofictions

“Yes, Kant did indeed speak of extraterrestrials.” This phrase could provide the opening for this brief treatise of philosofiction (as one speaks of science fiction). What is revealed in the aliens of which Kant speaks—and he no doubt took them more seriously than anyone else in the history of philosophy—are the limits of globalization, or what Kant called cosmopolitanism.

Before engaging Kantian considerations of the inhabitants of other worlds, before comprehending his reasoned alienology,...