Immanuel Kant’s views on politics, peace, and history have lost none of their relevance since their publication more than two centuries ago. This volume contains a comprehensive collection of Kant’s writings on international relations theory and political philosophy, superbly translated and accompanied by stimulating essays. Pauline Kleingeld provides a lucid introduction to the main themes of the volume, and three essays by distinguished contributors follow: Jeremy Waldron on Kant’s theory of the state; Michael W. Doyle on the implications of (...) Kant’s political theory for his theory of international relations; and Allen W. Wood on Kant’s philosophical approach to history and its current relevance. (shrink)

The article offers a comparative analysis of the peacemaking views of Immanuel Kant and Volodymyr Vynnychenko, who sought to find effective mechanisms for establishing “perpetual peace on earth”. The model of the Ukrainian writer’s collectivist society represents the Kantian concept of a “federation of free states” and an alternative for the modern world without war. Common points of contact between the philosophical treatises of Kant and Vynnychenko are found and the progressiveness of the “utopian” projects of thinkers that (...) have already been implemented or are at the implementation stage for its improvement is shown. It is proved that the Kantian-Vynnychenko peace is a phenomenon that developed in a certain cultural and historical context, so it is quite legitimate to talk about the identity of German-Ukrainian ideas in terms of the continuity of the philosophical tradition and temporal connections. We hypothesize that both authors created an effective conceptual basis for achieving peaceful coexistence on Earth, which is neither rational nor logical to neglect in today’s realities. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s views on politics, peace, and history have lost none of their relevance since their publication more than two centuries ago. This volume contains a comprehensive collection of Kant’s writings on international relations theory and political philosophy, superbly translated and accompanied by stimulating essays. Pauline Kleingeld provides a lucid introduction to the main themes of the volume, and three essays by distinguished contributors follow: Jeremy Waldron on Kant’s theory of the state; Michael W. Doyle on the implications of (...) Kant’s political theory for his theory of international relations; and Allen W. Wood on Kant’s philosophical approach to history and its current relevance. (shrink)

The title of this book, Towards Perpetual Peace, invites comparison with the writings of Kant, and there is no doubt that the author intended such comparisons. Like Kant, Banerjee considers the possibility of reconciling two apparently irreconcilable claims about human being’s circumstances. Like Kant, Banerjee develops prescriptions for human behavior that take the form of general imperatives. Like Kant, Banerjee reveals a far-ranging familiarity with earlier thinkers from many fields. But unfortunately, there are other resemblances. Banerjee, like (...) Kant, could have written in less tortured language. And like Kant’s efforts, Banerjee’s will not satisfy everyone. (shrink)

In 1795 Immanuel Kant published an essay entitled "Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch." The immediate occasion for the essay was the March 1795 signing of the Treaty of Basel by Prussia and revolutionary France, which Kant condemned as only "the suspension of hostilities, not a peace." In the essay, Kant argues that it is humankind's immediate duty to solve the problem of violence and enter into the cosmopolitan ideal of a universal community of all peoples governed (...) by the rule of law.The essay's two-hundredth anniversary, 1995, also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II and of the establishment of the Charter of the United Nations. The essays in this volume were written for a conference held in Frankfurt in May 1995 to commemorate these three anniversaries. Together, the authors argue for the continued theoretical and practical relevance of the cosmopolitan ideals of Kant's essay. They also show that history has both confirmed and outstripped Kant's prognoses. As recent events have shown, we certainly have not emerged from the violence of the state of nature. Accelerating globalization also gives these reconstructions and reappraisals of Kant's cosmopolitan ideal a new urgency.Contributors : Karl-Otto Apel, Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, Jürgen Habermas, David Held, Axel Honneth, Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, Thomas McCarthy, Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is the author of the project of “perpetual peace” as a concept for a global federation of states remaining in peaceful relations towards each other. According to the philosopher, in order for such a federation to be possible at some time in the future, individual states need to be institutions which respect their citizens’ right of self-determination. An additional necessary condition for the future implementation of “perpetual peace” is the appearance of at least (...) one state with a republican system of government. The German thinker saw that as the first step towards realising “perpetual peace”. According to Kant, “perpetual peace” is not only limited to the existence of a certain set of institutions, appropriate laws, or external relations among states and individual people. “Perpetual peace” chiefly demands that people internalise the following obligations: 1. peaceful conduct towards others; 2. hospitality; 3. fairness; 4. respect towards the self-determination of others; 5. self-sufficiency; 6. respecting the freedom of others; 7. refraining from actions which might raise distrust in others. Based on those requirements, the philosopher suggests that the fundamental condition for a future existence of “perpetual peace” is the proper moral education of people. (shrink)

B a c k g r o u n d. This article represents a reconstructive analysis of the idea of perpetual peace in the works of Immanuel Kant and liberal thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century as the forerunners and representatives of the democratic peace theory. The study examines the process of development and evolution of the concept of perpetual and universal peace in liberal discourse and its difference from the original project (...) of I. Kant. M e t h o d s. Currently, the following methods are used in the work: the principle of abstraction, that is, the rejection of a number of properties, connections and relations of the object or phenomenon under study, which are not essential for solving the assigned problems, to concentrate on its separate elements; the principle of objectivity, that is, taking into account all factors that simplify the process of studying selected objects, phenomena and processes; the principle of unity of theory and practice, taking into account their interdependence. the principle of rational reconstruction, that is, consideration of the history of the development of selected issues within the framework of the rational requirements of scientific discourse. R e s u l t s. In the process of research, tendencies towards the development of the idea of perpetual peace within the framework of liberal humanistic discourse were revealed, which certainly led to changes in the fundamental provisions of the original concept of perpetual peace, endowing it with democratic and market-liberal elements more characteristic of current scientific discourse. C o n c l u s i o n s. The Kantian project of perpetual peace forms the fundamental basis of the liberal democratic peace theory. The idea of a world without war, as well as the mechanism for its establishment and support through the creation of a single political and economic space within the framework of a world federation, served as the ideological basis for the democratic peace theory, however, in the process of its adaptation to the conditions of the new discourse, the original project underwent serious changes in its basis. Using the example of the evolutionary historical process around the "perpetual peace" project, we can trace the general mechanism for the development of scientific knowledge within the framework of a changing discourse, which, on the one hand, adapts a dynamically developing idea to the more current requirements of scientific knowledge, but on the other hand, preserves the main direction of the chosen problematic for preservation integrity of scientific discourse. (shrink)

This article explores the bases of Kant’s cosmopolitanism in his more systematic writings on freedom, judgment, and community. My argument is that, if we peer beneath his more explicitly normative prescriptions for achieving “perpetual peace,” we find the tools not just of a cosmopolitan vision but what we might call a “cosmopolitical method.” While many assume Kant’s political thought descends directly from his moral philosophy, a look back at relevant passages in the first Critique reveals an alternative reading (...) that points toward his theory of reflective judgment, which combines practical freedom with judgments based on theoretical concepts. Of particular importance is Kant’s conception of community as commercium, through which Kant discerns all matters of right to concern the way free actors are constrained to share the earth in common. These considerations allow for a broader way of thinking about Kantian cosmopolitanism, one that is responsive to the reflective judgment of world citizens as they encounter new challenges. (shrink)

Hasian, Condit, and Lucaites argue that there is "a need for investigating and implementing procedures that would democratize the legal system"i and that the boundaries of the law provide a fruitful site for such investigation. I would argue that one particularly relevant site to recover such procedures is American Indian law. American Indian treaties, although more so in terms of their negotiation rather than their final form, are hybrid documents, combining elements from both indigenous and Western law. Because treaties exist (...) at the boundaries between two systems of law, they are positioned not only to illuminate differences in practice but also to shed light on the balance of power between Indian nations and the U.S. government. Evidence of law's boundaries can be found, for example, in the adherence to, or abandonment of, indigenous practices of law over time. The journals of the proceedings in particular, which recorded the negotiation of the treaties, also documented cultural understandings of power, leadership, human relations, and attitudes toward the land. So if ever there were an opportunity to investigate and implement procedures leading to a more democratized legal system, this would be one. ;Traditional American Indian communication practices were not, and still are not, empty rituals or colorful customs of an exotic culture performed for the entertainment of outsiders. Neither are American Indian law practices the quaint customs of a long-gone past but living traditions still practiced today. I document this continuity in practice by investigating two sites: first, the historical journal of the proceedings from the 1825 Treaty of Prairie du Chien, and then in the contemporary rhetoric of their descendents, Anishinaabe environmental activists. Rhetorical analyses of these texts reveal not only American Indian concepts of law, peace, and kinship but also an environmental ethic, all based upon a rhetoric of responsibility rather than rights. ;Treaties may always be the primary written documents scrutinized in the courts when treaty rights are being asserted or challenged, but if we were serious about democratizing our legal system, then we would do well to implement many of the traditional communication practices rooted in our indigenous heritage. ;iMarouf Hasian, Jr., Celeste Michelle Condit, and John Louis Lucaites, "The Rhetorical Boundaries of 'the Law': A Consideration of the Rhetorical Culture of Legal Practice and the Case of the 'Separate But Equal' Doctrine," Quarterly Journal of Speech 82 , 339. (shrink)

Although Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès remains amongst the most studied thinkers of the French Revolution, his views on international politics remain largely unexplored, despite his significant role in shaping the foreign policy of the French republic after 1794. This article provides a new account of Sieyès as an international political thinker and actor, drawing on published and archival materials to reconstruct Sieyès' diplomatic programme and its intellectual roots. In so doing, it challenges both the notion that Sieyès was a committed practitioner of (...) an unideological realopolitik and the common assertion that Sieyès was a follower of Immanuel Kant's famous project for perpetual peace. Instead, this article shows that Sieyès charted a distinct course, based on a plan for the ‘republicanisation’ of Europe and its reorganisation into a league of militarily and economically linked states under French hegemony, oriented towards the preservation of republicanism in a hostile world. On this basis it re-evaluates the relationship between Sieyès' and Kant's conceptions of a confederation of republican states, presenting a new account of Kant's Perpetual Peace as a curtailment of his earlier cosmopolitan and pacifist idealism in response to the international situation of the 1790s and the foreign policy pursued by Sieyès and his allies. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant, in his political project, “Perpetual Peace” has attempted to show a moral hope for the scourge of humanity, i.e. war. For Kant, man’s intrinsic selfish nature is a cause of constant collision that can be controlled by universal laws of reason to ensure an enduring peace among the warring nations. But is this idealistic approach towards war equally applicable to concrete particular situations of humankind? What if there are conditions under which war becomes inevitable (...) or even a desirable alternative? Can the choice of war be a morally justified alternative? And again, with the choice of war, can we ever hope for perpetual peace? It seems not! There are certain conditions when humanity is put at stake and war turns out to be the ultimate way to find peace Kant hinted but has not explored at length. In this paper, I want to explore and expound on these human conditions by bringing the situational examples of Mahābhārata and its idea of Dharma Yudha (righteous war). Mahābhārata serves as illuminating justifications for irremediable difficulties and dilemmas behind the inescapability of war in certain human circumstances. I will try to understand how far this “realistic” effort is ethically warranted in the way of seeking peace. I argue that although the Kantian universal model of rejection of war is a valuable ideal, and Mahābhārata’s realistic solution in terms of recognition of righteous war is relevant on the practical ground, both these positions of morality and corporality do not seem to provide a sufficient means of achieving perpetual peace in a contingent world, and therefore, it requires to look at some other alternatives. In doing so, an attempt will be made to critically analyse the incessant struggle between universal and particular, or idealism and realism by highlighting the existential contingencies and ambiguities of human finitude in the light of Kant and Mahābhārata in relation with perpetual peace and war. (shrink)

This dissertation examines philosophical and literary configurations of "violence" in discourses of human freedom and imperial subjugation in Germany and Japan. The concept of "violence" marks the ethical limit of normative claims. Without a definition in itself, "violence" serves the critical function of disclosing norms orienting social and political life. Each of the authors studied in this dissertation turned toward a conception of human freedom founded in the confrontation of social norms disclosed by rhetorical violence. Chapter one examines the rhetoric (...) of Immanuel Kant's Zum ewigen Frieden in the historical context of its writing. Kant engages in a performative argument for publicity in his critique of Prussian imperialism and the censorship of revolutionary views. Through rhetorical gestures such as the title of his essay as an invocation of death and the clausula salvatoria as a hedge against his critics, Kant encodes the political upheavals of the historical exterior in the rhetorical movement of his essay. He argues for peace by performing violence in language. Whereas Kant's essay has been conventionally read apart from its historical context, Heinrich von Kleist's Die Herrmannsschlacht has been interpreted strictly in terms of the historical moment of its writing. Chapter two argues instead for a rhetorical reading of Kleist's play in which language emerges as both the central theme of the text and an agent of anti-imperial violence. Kleist concretizes metaphors of the body such that they perform the politics of absolute opposition. Freedom for Kleist means opposition to the other. Chapter three turns to an alternative conception of human freedom grounded in opposition. In his Phanomenologie des Geistes, Hegel produces a performative narrative of the development of subjectivity in relations of violence. As an "unhappy consciousness," the subject no longer opposes an external other but itself as an internal "enemy." The freedom that it attains is constituted in self-subjection. Chapter four examines the appropriation of Kant and Hegel by the Japanese wartime philosophers Miki Kiyoshi and Tanabe Hajime. Both defend the project of Japanese imperialism by arguing for a form of freedom in which the subject negates its attachment to the imperial state. This negation inverts into a performance of subjectivity as the movement of self-subjection. (shrink)

This article analyses the teleological argument justifying historical progress in Kant's Guarantee of Perpetual Peace. It starts by examining the controversies produced by Kant's claim that the teleology of nature supports the idea of a providential development of humanity towards moral progress and the possibility of achieving a cosmopolitan political constitution. It further illustrates how Kant's teleological argument in Perpetual Peace needs to be assessed with reference to two systematically relevant issues: first, the problem of (...) coordination linked to the necessity of realizing the ‘highest good’ as a historical end of practical reason, and secondly the problem of continuity posed by the temporal limitation of all individual efforts to cultivate moral dispositions. To illustrate the implications of both issues for the teleological argument in Perpetual Peace, the article draws attention to some important developments in Kant's analysis of teleology following the Critique of Judgment. (shrink)

In the following article I will discuss the context in which Kant used the theological concept of chiliasm. Kant introduced the concept of chiliasm to reflect the complexity of the feasibility of the idea of the highest good in the world. To achieve this, Kant made an effort to liberate chiliasm from an exclusively theological meaning and gave it a meaning consistent with his own philosophy. The introduction of the concept of “philosophical chiliasm” represents an alternative to the strategy of (...) the realization of the idea of the highest good presented in Critique of Practical Reason. We need not think of the feasibility of the highest goals of morality as those guaranteed by God alone. Since at least 1784 Kant has made it clear that the feasibility of these goals is also conceivable on the basis of the guarantees of nature itself. Philosophical chiliasm is thus Kant’s original answer to the question of the feasibility of the idea of the highest good in the world. The final answer is given in Towards Perpetual Peace. (shrink)

The idea that peace prevails in the relations among liberal democratic states, given its first expression in Kant’s essay “Toward Perpetual Peace,” has gathered a great deal of attention in the post-Cold War period as both a testable hypothesis and a proposal for expanding peace through democratization. This article examines the explanations for how a democratic peace is achieved and sustained. It argues that, despite tendencies within democratic state relations toward peaceful conflict resolution, such a (...) peace is destabilized by continued adherence to a set of assumptions and practices which we might call, following Jane Addams and John Dewey, ‘the war system.’ In the context of the ideological and institutional supports of militarism, democratic states remain subject to the dynamics of conflict escalation that produce occasions for war. This war system is the undoing of the democratic peace. (shrink)

This article, inspired by the Derridean thinking of hospitality, attempts to reflect upon the conditions of peace and hospitality, taking a reading of Kant's ‘Toward Perpetual Peace’ as its guiding thread. It endeavours to show that the peace that inhospitable nations maintain between themselves is necessarily illusory, as they continue to amass the restrictive conditions of their hospitality. The hypothesis is proposed that the guiding thread that links the elements of the hyperbolic ethics that Derrida deploys (...) in his ‘questions of responsibility’ seminars indeed concerns this unconditional condition of peace, of which hospitality is the first law. (shrink)

Peace, compared to war, receives scant attention. Comprised of nine essays drawn from a 2009 conference, the essays collected in Visions of Peace: Asia and the West, edited by Takashi Shogimen and Vicki A. Spencer, reach wide and far to push against that neglect. The essays focus on different conceptions of and plans for political peace. Even more impressively, they generally avoid well-trodden paths like Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace and instead draw upon Asian traditions and (...) more obscure Western traditions. The first essay, for instance, discusses the Greek goddess of peace and, contra various modern scholars, how peace was in fact an ideal for the Greeks and thought to be achievable. The final essay is on Jeremy... (shrink)

The article investigates the problem of Kant's proposal for a final global legal order. Kant expressed his stance very vaguely in the consecutively published texts On the Common Saying, Toward Perpetual Peace and The Metaphysics of Morals, which enabled numerous, often contradictory interpretations. The aim of the paper is to propose an alternative method of analysis of Kant's texts, which on one side reconciles textual discrepancies in his writings and on the other throws new light on many of (...) the previous interpretations. In order to accomplish this goal, I draw distinctions between four perspectives, from which the philosopher considers this issue in his writings. This allows me to give the final form of Kant's world peace, explain the character of the international state of nature vs the original one, and understand the role of the principles of politics and the status of Kant's teleological understanding of history. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of all of Kant's writings on moral and political philosophy collected in a single volume. No other collection competes with the comprehensiveness of this one. As well as Kant's most famous moral and political writings, the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphysics of Morals, and Toward Perpetual Peace, the volume includes shorter essays and reviews, some of which have never been translated before. The volume has (...) been furnished with a substantial editorial apparatus including translator's introductions and explanatory notes to each text by Mary Gregor, and a general introduction to Kant's moral and political philosophy by Allen Wood. There is also an English-German and German-English glossary of key terms. (shrink)

This essay interprets the much-neglected Second Part of The Conflict of the Faculties, entitled “An old question raised again: Is the human race constantly progressing?”, by showing the close relationship between the themes it deals with and those Kant addresses in the Supplements and Appendices of Perpetual Peace. In both works, Kant portrays the philosopher as having the duty to promote a “secret article”, without which his vision of a lasting international peace through the agency of a (...) federation of states is bound to fail. Both works identify this article as involving the necessity of publicity as a transcendental condition for peace, and call for philosophers to engage politicians and lawyers in a creative attitude towards lawmaking. Kant’s visionary program has failed to reach its goal up to now, not because it is too idealistic, but because philosophers have failed to take up the challenge. (shrink)

Carazan's dream : Kant's early theory of freedom -- Kant's archimedean moment : remarks in observation concerning the feeling of the beautiful and the sublime -- Rousseau, Count Verri, and the true economy of human nature : lectures on anthropology, 1772-1781 -- The paradox of autonomy -- Moral hesitation in religion within the boundaries of bare reason -- Kant's true politics : Völkerrecht in toward perpetual peace and the metaphysics of morals -- Kant as educator : conflict of (...) the faculties, part one -- Archimedes revisited : honor and history in the conflict of the faculties, part two -- Kant's Jewish problem. (shrink)

This is a Belarusian translation of an essay interpreting the much-neglected Second Part of Kant's book, Conflict of the Faculties, entitled “An old question raised again: Is the human race constantly progressing?”, by showing the close relationship between the themes it deals with and those Kant addresses in the Supplements and Appendices of Perpetual Peace. In both works, Kant portrays the philosopher as having the duty to promote a “secret article”, without which his vision of a lasting international (...) peace through the agency of a federation of states is bound to fail. Both works identify this article as involving the necessity of publicity as a transcendental condition for peace, and call for philosophers to engage politicians and lawyers in a creative attitude towards lawmaking. Kant’s visionary program has failed to reach its goal up to now, not because it is too idealistic, but because philosophers have failed to take up the challenge. (shrink)

M. Ally: Why Jaspers gives us Hope: Deconstruc ting the Myth of Cultural Impermeability B. Andrzejewski: Über Kant und Schelling hinaus. Zur Frage der existenziellen Theorie der Kommunikation bei Jaspers A. Cesana: Weltphilosophie und philosophischer Glaube J. M. Cho: Cross-Cultural Adaptations in Karl Jaspers J. Fukaya: The Japanese Moral Framework and Jaspers Philosophy K. Fukui: Karl Jaspers Philosophie aus Sicht der Kyoto-Schule J.-C. Gens: Jaspers Begegnung mit und sein Verhältnis zu China S. Hanyu: The Cross-Cultural Thought in Jaspers Philosophy. In (...) comparison with Kantian Thought in Toward Perpetual Peace K. Hara: Konflikte und Kommunikation der Religionen. Zur Möglichkeit des philosophischen Glaubens A. Hirano: Arendt und Jaspers: Der innere Zusammenhang und die Unterschiede zwischen den Gedanken beider S. C. Kim: Der philosophische Glaube angesichts des religiösen Pluralismus L. Lambrecht: Philosophie gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Hannah Arendt und Karl Jaspers E. Lee: Heidegger and Jaspers on the Public Sphere: Jaspers Theory of Communication as an Antidote to Heideggers Dark Public World W. Lee: Philosophischer Glaube und universale Kommunikation bei Karl Jaspers T. Nakajima: Die Idee der Universität inmitten der Popularisierung" T. Nakayama: Jaspers Philosophie und Buddhismus. Das Denken der Leerheit" C. Olay: Öffentlichkeit bei Jaspers und Hannah Arendt S.-K. Paek: Kants Schrift Zum ewigen Frieden im Spiegel dreier Interpretationen: Volker Gerhardt, Jürgen Habermas, Karl Jaspers E. Park: The Possibility of Social Existenz. A Reinterpretation of the Concept of Existenz in Karl Jaspers F. Peach: Jaspers, Existential Communication and Globalisation C. Piecuch: Welteinheit: Rationale Entscheidung oder kosmische Notwendigkeit? I. Ren: Zwei Wege der philosophischen Logik: Jaspers und Heidegger N. Reyhani: Die Anthropologie-Debatte und der Vorwurf des Positivismus gegen Karl Jaspers I. Sarin: Jaspers on Bridging the Intercultural Gap H.-J. Seideneck: Der Zusammenprall von Kulturkreisen im Weltdorf unter dem Blickwinkel des erhebenden Scheiterns bei Karl Jaspers H. Stelzer: Das Aufbrechen fixierter Weltbilder in der interkulturellen Kommunikation E. Struchholz: Karl Jaspers und Jacob Burckhardt: Existenz und Existenzbild A. Takahashi: Zur Wechselbeziehung zwischen der Kommunikation in der Geschichte und derjenigen in unserer Zeit bei Jaspers M. Wirtz: Die Regionen des Geistes. Zur interkulturellen Relevanz einer Weltphilosophiegeschichtsschreibung nach Karl Jaspers M. Wischke: Kommunikative Übergänge und Grenzsituationen. Über Schuld und Gedächtnis bei Jaspers. (shrink)

According to an oft-repeated narrative, while Kant maintained racist views through the 1780s, he changed his mind in the 1790s. Pauline Kleingeld introduced this narrative based on passages from Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals and “Toward Perpetual Peace”. On her reading, Kant categorically condemned chattel slavery in those texts, which meant that he became more racially egalitarian. But the passages involving slavery, once contextualized, either do not concern modern, race-based chattel slavery or at best suggest that Kant mentioned it (...) as a cautionary tale for labor practices in Europe. Overall, Kant never explicitly considered chattel slavery as a moral problem to be addressed on its own. Rather, he treated it primarily in terms of its function in human history. If he ended up expressing some qualms about its practices, it was likely because they threatened to deepen intra-European conflicts and undermine the prospect of perpetual peace. The humanity of the enslaved “Negroes” was never part of the reasoning. This was not a casual oversight on Kant’s part. It reflects the complexity of his philosophical system: everything he did or did not say about chattel slavery begins to make sense once we connect his philosophy of history and his depiction of “Negroes” as natural slaves. (shrink)

If Kant’s theory of justice is known for one thing, it is for offering a vision of a perfectly just society that is utterly disconnected from the imperfect societies that we occupy. The purity of Kant’s account has attracted criticism from those who claim that if a theory of justice is to be practical, it must offer more than a vision of a perfectly just society. It must also explain how existing societies mired in injustice are to be brought into (...) ever-closer conformity with the ideal that justice prescribes. In this essay, I will argue that this is exactly what Kant’s mature legal and political theory offers. To discern this feature of Kant’s theory, a neglected component must be integrated into his broader framework. This component is what Kant refers to in Toward Perpetual Peace as a permissive law of public right. (shrink)

This book is the first translation into English of the Reflections which Kant wrote whilst formulating his ideas in political philosophy: the preparatory drafts for Theory and Practice, Toward Perpetual Peace, the Doctrine of Right, and Conflict of the Faculties; and the only surviving student transcription of his course on Natural Right. Through these texts one can trace the development of his political thought, from his first exposure to Rousseau in the mid 1760s through to his last musings (...) in the late 1790s after his final system of Right was published. The material covers such topics as the central role of freedom, the social contract, the nature of sovereignty, the means for achieving international peace, property rights in relation to the very possibility of human agency, the general prohibition of rebellion, and Kant's philosophical defense of the French Revolution. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical evaluation of the arguments that Kleingeld and Bernasconi used to support their claims regarding the idea that Immanuel Kant held racist beliefs. Firstly, we will criticize the views on which they agree, aiming to emphasize our understanding of Kant’s thoughts on race. Secondly, we will assess the significance of Kant’s draft for Towards Perpetual Peace when considering the debate over Kant’s racism, and show that Bernasconi’s interpretation — according to which Kant presented (...) racist views in the third Critique and in his writings on history — is problematic. Although we will not systematically present our understanding of Kant’s thoughts on race, our critique of Kleingeld’s and Bernasconi’s claims will reflect our basic views: Kant was not a racist, and he never advocated for slavery and colonization. Kleingeld is right to insist that we must interpret Kant’s thoughts on race diachronically, as it is clear that his views evolved over the course of his life, but did not fundamentally change. (shrink)

The starting point of my study is Kant’s remark to the effect that Garve in his treatise on the connection between morality and politics presents arguments in defence of unjust principles. Recognition of these principles is, according to Kant, an inadvisable concession to those who are inclined to abuse it. I interpret this judgement by making a detailed comparison of the texts of the two treatises. I demonstrate that Garve’s work is an eclectic attempt to combine in one concept the (...) lessons of historical experience with the ideas drawn from British empiricism and German rationalism. These ideas were criticised by Kant in his “critical” period. There is a consensus among researchers that Garve condoned the expansionist policy of Frederick II of Prussia, totally denied that legality in international relations was possible and in general deserved the reputation of an conservative. From that point of view the key values for Garve were the security and well-being of the state. I offer an alternative interpretation of Garve’s position because I believe that the value of political stability plays an important role in it. Such an interpretation makes it possible to treat Garve’s narrative as it was assessed by Kant, i.e. as a concession to the common principles of political practice as a result of a failure to find the guiding theory. My study has established that the role of Garve’s work in the writing of Kant’s treatise Toward Perpetual Peace was more significant than Kant’s own words suggest. Besides, I show that it was under Garve’s influence that Kant turned to the problem of excessive complexity of the principles involved in the search for concrete political decisions. Garve obviously laments this complexity and yet makes these principles still more complex. Kant offers a simpler solution of the problem on the basis of his theory of morals and right. (shrink)

Beginning with an analysis of an early satire of Kant 's doctrine of marital law, this essay draws on Walter Benjamin's condensed exposition of this doctrine in order to ask whether Kant 's notoriously unsentimental representation of marriage is, in fact, from the perspective of his own idea of law, overly sentimental. Whereas Kant ridicules the idea of a "law of war" in his program for perpetual peace, he accepts the possibility of legally sanctioned intercourse, in which people (...) use others and themselves. Between marital law and martial law lies maritime law, which concerns a surface that can be used but not mastered. (shrink)

This 1997 book was the first English translation of all of Kant's writings on moral and political philosophy collected in a single volume. No other collection competes with the comprehensiveness of this one. As well as Kant's most famous moral and political writings, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphysics of Morals, and Toward Perpetual Peace, the volume includes shorter essays and reviews, some of which have never been translated before. The (...) volume has been furnished with a substantial editorial apparatus including translator's introductions and explanatory notes to each text by Mary Gregor, and a general introduction to Kant's moral and political philosophy by Allen Wood. There is also an English-German and German-English glossary of key terms. (shrink)

Karl Jaspers regarded Kant as one of the biggest thinkers in the history of world philosophy. His own philosophy was deeply influenced by that thought. The present paper tries to illustrate which kantian notions were adopted by Jaspers inside his philosophy and refashioned in order to suit his existentialistic approach. The first part analyses how Jaspers conceived the critical use of the reason as properly human faculty, forcing it toward a practical and existential meaning. The second part investigates Jaspers’ interpretation (...) of Kants’ political thought with particular reference to his famous treatise on the perpetual peace. Following through Jaspers’ commentary to the text, three main themes are highlighted: Kant’s not utopian approach towards politics; the practical certainty of ethical ideas like liberty and progress; the strong component of faith – particularly the confidence in the human being and in the appellative and transformative power of his reason – held by Kant’s philosophy. What ensues is a dramatic and stimulating understanding of Kant’s political thought, still offering intellectual hints to the man living in our XXIst century time. (shrink)

This book is the first translation into English of the Reflections which Kant wrote whilst formulating his ideas in political philosophy: the preparatory drafts for Theory and Practice, Toward Perpetual Peace, the Doctrine of Right, and Conflict of the Faculties; and the only surviving student transcription of his course on Natural Right. Through these texts one can trace the development of his political thought, from his first exposure to Rousseau in the mid 1760s through to his last musings (...) in the late 1790s after his final system of Right was published. The material covers such topics as the central role of freedom, the social contract, the nature of sovereignty, the means for achieving international peace, property rights in relation to the very possibility of human agency, the general prohibition of rebellion, and Kant's philosophical defense of the French Revolution. (shrink)

Kant is widely regarded as a fierce critic of colonialism. In Toward Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals, for example, he forcefully condemns European conduct in the colonies as a flagrant violation of the principles of right. His earlier views on colonialism have not yet received much detailed scrutiny, however. In this essay I argue that Kant actually endorsed and justified European colonialism until the early 1790s. I show that Kant’s initial endorsement and his subsequent criticism of (...) colonialism are closely related to his changing views on race, because his endorsement of a racial hierarchy plays a crucial role in his justification of European colonialism. He gave up both in the mid 1790s while he was developing his legal and political philosophy, and he adopted a more egalitarian version of the cosmopolitan relationship among peoples. (shrink)

The Appendix to Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace is commonly viewed as an explication of the systematic relations between political practice and normative political theory. This paper provides an alternative interpretation of Kant’s main aim in the Appendix which is to provide an argument against the so-called “practical man.” The practical man believes that human nature precludes normative political ideals from ever playing a significant role within political practice. Drawing on the 1793 text “On the common saying: That may (...) be correct in theory, but is of no use in practice,” the paper argues that Kant’s argument against the practical man is based on a proto-phenomenological analysis of moral experience. The practical man’s attempt to describe political practice in purely non-normative terms is, Kant believes, necessarily self-undermining because it denies one of the most basic aspects of human life; the inherent and inescapable normativity of practical reason. (shrink)

In ‘Kant’s Changing Cosmopolitanism’ and Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship, Pauline Kleingeld argues that, in ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent,’ Kant meant for the Bund of states to be a coercive federation. Kleingeld admits that there is a disparity between this earlier coercive idea of the Bund and Kant’s talk of a voluntary congress in Toward Perpetual Peace and The Metaphysics of Morals. She explains this disparity by: appealing to a (...) semantic ambiguity in the term ‘Bund’; making claims about with which contemporary 18th century works Kant was acquainted; and ultimately attempting to draw a parallel between the unsocial sociability of individual people within a state and the unsocial sociability of individual states in a larger community of states. In this paper, I argue that while Kleingeld’s claims are superficially supported by the text, her claims depend on her apparent conflating of teleology and morality. (shrink)

RESUMENLa filosofía del derecho de Fichte supone una importante anomalía dentro del Idealismo Alemán, en especial por su problemático posicionamiento en relación con la filosofía del derecho de Kant y su reelaboración del derecho natural. Fichte publica el Fundamento del Derecho Natural según los principios de la Doctrina de la Ciencia en 1796, es decir, un año después de la publicación de Hacia la paz perpetua y un año antes de la publicación de los «Principios metafísicos de la doctrina del (...) derecho» de la Metafísica de las Costumbres. La formulación y fundamentación que lleva a cabo Fichte en esta obra del derecho natural es enteramente original y a la vez internamente problemática debido a la tensión que en ella se da entre la validez normativa de los principios del derecho y la realización positiva de los mismos. Ejemplo paradigmático de esta tensión lo ofrece la noción de «derecho originario» (Urrecht) que Fichte elabora a lo largo de su trabajo de 1796. Nuestra investigación se va a centrar en analizar esta noción de «derecho originario» en la doctrina del derecho de Fichte para desplegar una interpretación iusnaturalista de la misma con vistas a relativizar o por lo menos matizar las lecturas preeminentemente positivistasde la filosofía del derecho de Fichte.PALABRAS CLAVESIDEALISMO ALEMÁN, DERECHO NATURAL, PRINCIPIOS DEL DERECHOY DERECHO ORIGINARIOABSTRACTFichte's philosophy of right constitutes an anomaly within German Idealism, particularly due to its problematic positioning in relation to Kant's philosophy of right and his reworking of natural right. Fichte published Foundations of Natural Right in Accordance with the Principles of the Doctrine of Science in 1796, that is, a year after the publication of Towards Perpetual Peace and a year before the publication of «Metaphysical Principles of the Doctrine of Right», in Metaphysics of Morals. Fichte's formulation and substantiation in this work on natural right is entirely original and, at the same time, internally problematic due to the tension created between the regulatory validity of the principles of right and their positive realisation. A paradigmatic example of this tension can be seen in the notion of «primordial right» (Urrecht) developed by Fichte throughout his 1796 work. Our research will centre on analysing the notion of «primordial right» in Fichte's Doctrine of Right to present a natural law-based interpretation of this right with a view to qualifying or at least placing into perspective the pre-eminently positivist readings of Fichte's philosophy of right.KEYWORDSGERMAN IDEALISM, NATURAL RIGHT, PRINCIPLES OF RIGHT,PRIMORDIAL RIGHT. (shrink)

The study discusses Kant’s doctrine of lasting peace contained in his essay Toward Perpetual Peace (1795). First, the historical-political circumstances surrounding the genesis of Kant’s essay are described. Kant’s preliminary measures, which in his opinion must be accepted if lasting peace is to be ensured, are also discussed. Great attention is paid to the very core of Kant’s essay: his proposal for a comprehensive reform of law, which should apply to state, international, and cosmopolitan law. This (...) is followed by an exposition of Kant’s reflections on the feasibility of his doctrine of lasting peace in history. And finally, Kant’s view of the public as an institution is summarized. The originality of Kant’s approach is seen by the author above all in the fact that, from the point of view of the philosophy of law, the doctrine of lasting peace in Toward Perpetual Peace is connected with a consideration regarding its realizability in history. He also draws attention to the fact that though this detail is known, it is often marginalized in secondary literature. (shrink)

Introducing articles on Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace, various interpretative questions are discussed. Externally, alleged senility is contrasted with political maturity, just as irony and rhetorics are discussed in relation to (self-)censorship and the French Revolution. Internally, Kant scholars have discussed, e.g. the use of ‘eternal’ vs. ‘perpetual’, the question of preventive war, and, more in general, the relation between Kant’s political writings. In relation to the three definitive articles on state law, law of people and world citizen (...) law, issues are, e.g., Kant’s conception of constitution, democracy and their relation to peace, peace federation vs. world republic, thesis vs. hypothesis, and various ideas of sovereignty, as well as cosmopolitanism vs. world citizen right. Finally, questions concerning morality vs. politics and concerning transcendental publicity are presented. (shrink)

This article has two objectives: first, to bring to the fore Kant's neglected distinction between ‘critique’ and ‘doctrine’ and, second, to relate this distinction to Kant's notion of a philosophy of right. Kant's culminating contribution to practical philosophy, the Metaphysics of Morals, contains a doctrine of right and this ‘doctrine’ has received relatively little attention thus far in English-language writing on Kant. One of the reasons for this relative neglect is, I believe, due to the prevalent attention provided to Kant's (...) practical critique at the expense of his practical doctrine. I aim to provide an account of Kant's critique of right in order to enable an understanding of Kant's doctrine of right to be provided with some initial orientation. I will be suggesting that this critique of right is presented in Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. (shrink)

The paper aims to investigate the Kantian thought concerning the pre-juridical international relations. These relations are founded on the preliminary articles. In Towards Perpetual Peace, these articles constitute the morals minimal conditions through which individuals, States and people are protected against abuses from the state of nature. Kant’s thesis is that even in war, where there is not still a sphere public juridical, the moral elements must subsist. The preliminary articles are the first step towards the (...) establishment of the international law and of the cosmopolitan law. His moral elements constitute the fundamental principles through which the international relations have legitimacy to Kant. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to present a critical assessment of Jürgen Habermas' reformulation of Kant's philosophical project Toward Perpetual Peace. Special attention is paid to how well Habermas' proposed multi-level institutional model fares in comparison with Kant's proposal—a league of states. I argue that Habermas' critique of the league fails in important respects, and that his proposal faces at least two problems. The first is that it implies a problematic asymmetry between powerful and less powerful states. (...) The second is that it entails creating a global police force that has an obligation to intervene against egregious human rights violations worldwide, and that this seems incompatible with the idea that every person has an innate right to freedom. There are important normative constraints relevant for institutional design in the international domain that Habermas does not take sufficiently into account. However, this does not mean that Kant's league cannot be supplemented with more comprehensive forms of institutional cooperation between states. On the basis of my assessment of the multi-level model, I propose a hybrid model combining elements from Kant and Habermas. (shrink)

International law has one principal mechanism for settling the legality of humanitarian interventions, the United Nations Security Council's power to authorise coercion. However, this is hardly satisfactory in practice and has failed to provide a more secure juridical basis for determining significant conflicts among states over when humanitarian force is justified. This article argues that, in spite of Immanuel Kant's limited analysis of intervention, and his silence on humanitarian intervention, his political theory provides the elements of a compelling analysis on (...) this topic. Five components of Kant's roadmap towards perpetual peace and an eventual world republic give conditional support for humanitarian intervention even in imperfect juridical conditions. This support is conditional on the achievement of juridical progress within and among states and has implications for the development of cosmopolitan citizenship. From Kant we learn that, ultimately, humanitarian intervention should become a matter of coercive law enforcement rather than an ethical question of ‘saving strangers’. (shrink)