ABSTRACT
The author gives a quick characterisation of this self-interrupting teleology, or of teleology as self-interrupting, on the basis of Kant's political writings. Kant's view of politics is ideologically determined by the notion of perpetual peace. But as perpetual peace is synonymous with death, peace has a chance only if it holds itself this side of perpetuity, perpetually deferring its perpetuity, if you like. And this interruption of what looks at first like a straightforward teleological structure has important consequences for Kant's political thinking around cosmopolitanism, and in fact it is just this structure which generates the complex business of hospitality which has interested Derrida recently. Cosmopolitanism has to be limited, or limit itself, to rights of hospitality, says Kant, just because a cosmopolitanism that fulfilled itself in the form of an internationalism or world-state would catastrophically fall into just the sort of violence and oppression that the whole teleological setup was supposed to overcome.
