ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Immanuel Kant's general project and its connection with emancipation. It shows how this project is bound up with Kant's theory of ethics, his conception of the relation of theory and practice and his dialectical-teleological understanding of history. In emancipatory international relations (EIR) Kant can be seen as a foundational figure for modernist versions, but his influence is so far reaching that even postmodernist versions of EIR acknowledge the importance of his work. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason shows that reason, even when quite correctly torn down from the rationalist's pedestal, still has a decisively important role through having devised principles which would result in human emancipation. For Kant, empirical historiography was no substitute for teleological-idealism, for the idea, that is, that the transformation of the world in the light of the highest good is a moral duty whose articulation depends not on man's will but on history or providence.
