Kymlicka than Waldron. If from Kant's description of the right to visit, all we can rule out is one
extreme view about cultural purity, Waldron has not established very much. Yet it seems that
Waldron wants to establish much more by running together the meanings of integrity and purity.
Waldron seems to run together two meanings of the word "intercourse." Intercourse (or
commerce) can mean any type of contact whatsoever, or it can mean more specific relations like
trade and extensive cultural exchange. Waldron is right that Kant does not defend cultural purity
in that the right to visit does not rule out all types of intercourse. If cultural purity means no
contact at all, then Kant does not put protections in place for it. However, Waldron slights the
importance of how the right to visit involves cultural groups having the discretion to determine
the terms of interaction and intercourse with visitors. Except for one qualification (that the
visitors will not then die), Kant allows societies to turn away visitors, to reject intercourse in all
except this most wide sense of intercourse: offering to engage in more types of intercourse. Kant
says: “But although such abuses are possible, they do not deprive the world's citizens of the right
to attempt to enter into a community with everyone else and to visit all regions of the earth with
this intention. This does not, however, amount to a right to settle on another's territory...”
Kant allows that there exists a right to visit any and every place with the intention of attempting
to engage in relations. For longer contacts, a contract or agreement is required. Waldron is too
quick to conclude that Kant would not have a right to visit if he valued cultural integrity.
Waldron is mistaken when he says: “Even though such contacts will inevitably
compromise the identity and purity of one or both of the cultures (that is what contact –
commerce, intercourse, conversation – is) that in itself is not to be regarded as a ground for
hostility.”
Waldron's use of "such contacts" and "inevitably" is ambiguous here. "Such
contacts" could refer only to the contact needed in order to makes offers regarding more extensive
25
By “cultural integrity” or “identity” Waldron may mean what he elsewhere refers to as “cultural distinctiveness”
(“Multiculturalism and Mélange,” p. 99). I will touch on his criticisms of this idea later in the paper, but this is a
separate issue. I maintain that all my points here still apply. Waldron cannot easily exclude cultural integrity (as I
understand it) from cosmopolitan right, and so he has a gap in what he identifies as the presuppositions of cosmopolitan
right.
26
6:353 MM §62 (Reiss, p. 172), italics in original.
27
Waldron, "Kant's Heading 'Cosmopolitan Right',” p. 9, emphasis added.
9
Convention