Hospitality beyond Borders

Abstract

This chapter will provide a hermeneutic of Kant’s notion of international hospitality as it relates to what I take to be his phenomenology of respect (i.e., experiencing the moral law), and respect’s call to hospitably that holds space open for the freedom-dignity of the other. My ultimate claim is that hospitality in Kant’s world involves welcoming the freedom of ourselves and others both within and beyond domestic borders—including the unanticipated, unknown, unforeseeable consequences that freedom so construed necessarily entails. This is to say that acting from duty (out of respect for the other) can be understood as acting in hospitality, while acting from inclination (disrespecting the other in the service of oneself) can be understood as acting in hostility.