Introduction: utopia a vs. nationhood.

I think I know man, but as for men, I know them not.

--Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In a memorable passage at the beginning of The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant evokes a soaring dove that, "cleaving the air in her free flight," feels the resistance of the wind and imagines that its flight "would be easier still in empty space." A fond thought, of course, since absent that aeolian pressure the dove would simply plummet to the ground.

How regularly the friction of reality works that way: making possible our endeavors even as it circumscribes and limits their extent. And how often, like Kant's dove, we are tempted to imagine that our freedoms would be ...