theoretical gulf between morality and politics as to make the ideal seem unreachable. Kant tried to show how a world resistant to morality might nevertheless evolve towards one in which moral action had real political effect*a necessary condition, he believed, for an international federation of republics committed to peaceful coexistence. The implausibility of his account reveals the problematic nature of the idealism realism divide, but also, in its attempt to bridge that divide, points the way towards a genuinely