• The book provides the reader an in-depth analysis of Kant’s theory of moral personality of the state. In doing so the book expands both the Kantian scholarship in IR and IR’s debates on moral agency of the state. • The book provides an account of moral agency with moral standing, therefore contributing to the philosophical debate whether or not the state can be considered an actor with moral standing. It therefore challenges accounts according to which moral standing can only be contributed to individual human beings. The book aims to prove that while different from the moral standing of individuals, the state has one. • The book provides a more statist reading of Kant’s international politics, therefore challenging some more cosmopolitan approaches to his work predominant in the field of International Relations. It helps the reader to understand how the account of moral personality of the state may explain these realist, statist features of Kant’s politics.

Kant’s moral and political philosophy has been important in developing ethical thinking in international relations. This study argues that his theory of the state is crucially important for understanding the moral agency of the state as it is discussed in contemporary debates. For Kant, it is argued that the state has not only duties but also, controversially, inalienable rights that ground its relationship to its citizens and to other states. Most importantly, the state – regardless of its governmental form or factual behaviour – has a right to exist as a state. The Kantian account provided, therefore, explores not only the moral agency but also the moral standing of the state, examining the status of different kinds of states in world politics and expectations towards their ethical behaviour. Every state has a moral standing that must be respected in a morally imperfect world gradually transforming towards the ideal condition of perpetual peace.