Rereading Kant: Categorical Imperative In The Fight Against Climate Change

This article has been written as a result of the author’s presentation at the special scientific and expert session ‘Immanuel Kant’s Legacy for Modern International Relations’ in April 2024, within the framework of the international Kantian Congress in the philosopher’s homeland in Kaliningrad (Russia). The author analyzes the deontological ethical concept of the great Enlightenment philosopher in relation to climate ethics and global climate governance. She has studied and systematized a significant body of foreign and domestic scientific literature in the subject field of interdisciplinary research on ethical issues of global climate change and considers the use of the categorical imperative and other key concepts and postulates of Kantian ethics in scientific publications on climate ethics, climate law and international climate cooperation. Analyzing the strict ethical system constructed by Kant, the author uses the lexicon of Political Science and International Relations studies, in particular by dealing with the category of political identity. The question is raised about the applicability of Kant’s moral ideas in understanding modern trends of world development and forming a special development identity under conditions of climate change and world energy transition. In the focus of the author’s attention is the comprehension of the categorical imperative as a universal moral law in the logic of sustainable development and the analysis of the‘ecological imperative’ neologism. The key tasks of the education system are to form new identities, ecological and climatic ones, to foster individual (personal) responsibility towards oneself and future generations. Narrative and discourse analysis have beeb used as the main methods of research, which have made it possible to identify and understand the causal links between the use of Kant’s philosophical ideas and constructs in the formation and implementation of a modern climate agenda. In the paradigm of political science and, in particular, the identity approach, the author applies the concepts of political identity and identity of development to distinguish the potential of Kantian ethics in cultivating ecological (climate) identity in everyone not only at national level, but also at the macro-regional and global levels, to realize effectively the climate agenda.