"He maintains that a modern political state with established democracies
cannot and should not work on power arrangements and strategies alone. As a
moralist, Kant believes that politics should not be a function of material
self-interest where the most consuming thought is to gain one’s way at the
expense of morals and in the end, peace. Instead, Kant suggests that there
should be a limit to what politics should be allowed to do. This is
applicable through a morally aware politician “who so interprets the
principles of political prudence that they can be coherent with morality"
(Kant, 1998) thus maintaining the “limiting condition of politics” (Kant,
1998)."
A commentary on the ‘Perpetual Peace’ of Immanuel Kant
This letter aims to draw attention to one of Immanuel Kant’s more accessible
works, Perpetual Peace – A Philosophical Essay, and to explore its relevance
for us today. Kant’s essay begins by setting out the ‘preliminary articles’
to the establishment of a perpetual peace between states– those conditions
which must be met in order to make a perpetual peace a possibility – and
then proceeds to the ‘definitive articles’, upon which a lasting peace may
be built. Here we shall relate briefly the contents of both sets of
articles, before moving on to examine more closely the underlying tensions
which these articles – and Kant’s programme as a whole – seek to reconcile.
Kant’s title, he tells us in a preliminary remark, is taken from a
‘satirical inscription’ on the sign of a Dutch inn, where the legend ‘Pax
Perpetua’ appears above the image of a graveyard. Either Leibniz had drunk
at the same inn, or Kant had read of the signboard in Leibniz’s
correspondence, for the translator produces a reference to it from a letter
of the latter to Grimarest. Kant suggests various possible targets of this
‘satire’ – it might be mankind as a whole, the rulers of states ("unwearying
in their love of war"), or "…only at the philosophers who cherish the sweet
dream of perpetual peace." Kant numbers himself amongst this last group, and
the essay which follows is his attempt to show how this ‘sweet dream’ might
eventually be realised. In one manner, he portrays ‘perpetual peace’ between
states as an attainable, if distant, ideal; in another, it is seen to be a
principle towards which we are morally compelled to strive, regardless of
whether or not its realisation in practice is feasible. In true Kantian
fashion, it transpires in the end that the moral and practical aspects find
in each other a happy concord, so that this is "…a problem which gradually
works out its own solution."
Nevertheless, the essay proper presents a programme for action, while the
account of how perpetual peace might arise of its own accord is relegated to
the essay’s First Supplement. The articles Kant sets out are of a
prescriptive rather than a descriptive nature, and fall into two categories:
the preliminary and the definitive. The text of the articles themselves is
brief, and is as follows:
Preliminary articles:
No treaty of peace shall be regarded as valid, if made with the secret
reservation of material for a future war.
No state having an independent existence – whether it be great or small –
shall be acquired by another through inheritance, exchange, purchase or
donation.
Standing armies shall be abolished in course of time.
No national debts shall be contracted in connection with the external
affairs of the state.
No state shall violently interfere with the constitution and administration
of another.
No state at war with another shall countenance such modes of hostility as
would make mutual confidence impossible in a subsequent state of peace: such
are the employment of assassins (percussores) or of poisoners (venefici),
breaches of capitulation, the instigating and making use of treachery
(perduellio) in the hostile state.
This group of conditions evidently aims to address the climate of mistrust
between nations, and to bring about an environment within which a perpetual
peace could arise. As such, they seek predominantly to stabilise the
relations between nations, rather than to set principles for the arbitration
of conflicts. Consequently, these articles are not to be applied
retrospectively – in the case of Article 2, for example, Kant stipulates
that "the prohibition refers here only to the mode of acquisition which is
to be no longer valid, and not to the fact of possession which, although
indeed it has not the necessary title of right, yet at the time of so-called
acquisition was held legal by all states, in accordance with the public
opinion of the time." With this in mind, then, the objectives of the
preliminary articles are to freeze the current shape of nations by assuring
the sovereignty of each (Articles 2 & 5), to remove apparent threats to the
sovereignty of other nations (Articles 3 & 4), and to reassure each nation
that the word of another may be trusted (Articles 1 & 6). Once attained then
these measures, addressing the form of relations between nations, may be
succeeded by principles governing future relations. Without such principles,
Kant tells us, a lasting peace is impossible, as a present peace carries no
guarantee against future war – Kant sides with Hobbes in seeing war as the
natural state, and thus "…the state of peace must be established." This can
only be achieved by the application of the following definitive articles:
The civil constitution of each state shall be republican.
The law of nations shall be founded on a federation of free states.
The rights of men, as citizens of the world, shall be limited to the
conditions of universal hospitality.
What exactly a ‘republican’ constitution means in practice is perhaps one of
the hazier areas of Kant’s essay, although certain elaborations are made:
the principles of a republican constitution are the freedom of its members,
their dependence upon a common legislation, and their equality as citizens.
Its necessity in bringing about a perpetual peace arises from the fact that
under this form of constitution, all subjects must themselves apparently
consent to fight and to meet the costs of war, an eventuality which is
supposed unlikely if the citizens weigh up their decision properly
beforehand. This is contrasted with the declaration of war by a despotic
ruler who has no intention of being personally involved in combat, and
consequently has not the same deterrent in committing the country to war.
The ‘law of nations’ is in most respects analogous on the level of states to
the republican constitution binding the citizens of each state, ensuring
their ‘freedom’ (or sovereignty), dependence on common laws, and equality.
‘Hospitality’, in the final article, "…signifies the claim of a stranger
entering foreign territory to be treated by its owner without hostility."
Underlying all the articles, preliminary and definitive, is a set of
partially implicit principles that will be familiar from Kant’s other
writings. First and foremost, there is the role of reason in revealing to us
our duty, in this case to work towards the establishment of perpetual peace.
As we have seen, Kant sees war as the ‘natural’ state and peace as that to
be ‘established’; through his emphasis on the power of reason to determine
moral and practical right, it appears that the barrier to peace is not the
warlike tendencies of mankind as such, but the widespread failure to see
reason when the prospect of war arises. Kant’s ‘reason’ is the highest
faculty of thought, unique to mankind; this mode of passionless perception
and detached contemplation apparently produce the same result regardless of
the identity of the reasoner. The unity of reason may be seen as the
foundation of other Kantian principles, notably those of equality, freedom,
and transparency. These latter principles might be described in turn as
constituting the environment most conducive to the exercise of reason, and
Kant’s implication is that if people are rarely reasonable, it is because
the conditions which best suit reason are lacking.
In this way it seems that reason begets reason : reason reveals duty, and
our duty is to act to bring about the conditions within which reason may be
freely exercised. The state of ‘perpetual peace’ is one way of describing
these conditions, and Kant’s programme for action sets out the
self-perpetuating course shown by human reason to be our duty. Nevertheless,
in the First Supplement to the essay, Kant attempts to show that the route
to perpetual peace is the destiny of the world irrespective of whether
mankind obeys the rule of reason; there is thus both a mechanical and moral
necessity to this end. Whether it is called ‘Fate’ or ‘Providence’, Kant
argues, there is in nature "…a predetermined design to make harmony spring
from human discord, even against the will of man."
Expressed by Kant in animistic terms, as the actions and intentions of
‘Nature’ concerning human beings, the argument for the mechanical necessity
of perpetual peace runs along the familiar lines of the contract
philosophers, as follows: If each person is motivated purely by
self-interest, they will then seek laws to protect their own interests
against other people, and peace to guarantee their own security. With the
additional factor of a commercial interest, which "…sooner or later […]
takes possession of every nation" and is incompatible with war, it thus
appears to Kant that "…nature guarantees the coming of perpetual peace,
through the natural course of human propensities: not indeed with sufficient
certainty to enable us to prophesy the future of this ideal theoretically,
but yet clearly enough for practical purposes." The outcome is sufficiently
finely poised to provide a role for human duty, rather than allowing us to
wait for the inevitable to happen; the practical necessity of perpetual
peace is therefore seen to be an essential concomitant of its moral
necessity, as reason cannot dictate that we labour towards unattainable
ends.
While the practical and moral paths to perpetual peace may be conjoined,
Kant nevertheless cautions against a deference to practical rather than
moral ends. This distinction he expresses in an appendix to the essay
proper, through an elaboration of the archetypes of the ‘moral politician’
and the ‘political moralist’. The former practises politics within the
bounds laid down by morals, the latter selects and contorts morals in order
to satisfy the political demands of the moment. The moral politician is held
up as an exemplar, while the political moralist is an out-and-out villain in
the Machiavellian mould. An alternative way of formulating the distinction
between these two types would be whether primacy is given to faith or to
experience : Kant’s reason dictates that we strive towards an outcome –
perpetual peace – that lies beyond our current range of experience, whereas
the cynic would reject the possibility of this state ever arising, on the
evidence of past and present wars. Kant’s argument for the practical
necessity of perpetual peace serves therefore to provide an object of faith
to light the moral path, and it appears to be included in his argument for
this rather than any other purpose. After all, we can only pursue perpetual
peace as moral agents – while ‘Nature’ pursues its own practical course
independently of our actions – but our efforts in this direction are only
tenable if we also know them to be practical, i.e. we believe in the reality
of their ultimate goal. The argument for the practical necessity of
perpetual peace thus falls into the category of ‘useful beliefs’, and has an
ontological status within the argument – if we believe that perpetual peace
is a practical aim, and if we follow the dictates of reason, then we will
act from a moral standpoint to bring it about; this in turn increases the
practicality of the aim.
To conclude this exegesis, then an axiom of this programme for the
attainment of perpetual peace is the essential freedom of human reason. In
Kant’s schema, this freedom is the basis of moral thought, and allows us to
focus on such ultimate ends as a perpetual peace between nations. With this
in mind, the role of the preliminary and definitive articles may be seen not
only as a direct route to the cessation of conflict between nations, but
also to providing a political environment in which everyone is free to
exercise their reason. In this sense, the moral and practical aspects of the
thesis are once again intertwined, as the practical realisation of a
perpetual peace between nations is simultaneously the moral reformation of
the human race.
With this outline of the content and purpose of Kant’s thesis behind us, let
us briefly consider some of its implications for the present day. His theory
of perpetual peace poses many questions not only to the philosopher, but
also to the social scientist. He has predicted that the world will tend
towards the establishment of perpetual peace, and he has provided us with
two sets of articles that might be used to measure progress towards this
state. It would surely be a worthwhile project for some empirically-minded
historian to attempt to determine whether perpetual peace is any closer
today than it was when Kant wrote his essay in 1795 (it is unfortunate that
the bicentenary – surely an opportunity to persuade reticent publishing
houses to back such a project – has already passed). In addition, given Kant
’s foresight in providing the kinds of criteria that fascinate us in our
current age under the names of ‘deliverables’ and ‘performance indicators’,
there is a great deal of scope for Kant’s programme to be championed by some
consultancy firm. Nevertheless, perhaps the principal appeal of Kant’s text
for us today comes from the fact that many of the implied criticisms of his
age might be applied equally to our own. Readers will no doubt have their
own views regarding the extent of the distance yet separating us from
perpetual peace, and of which of the specific articles set out in Kant’s
essay are furthest from being fulfilled. One striking difference, though,
lies in the form of internal political constitution of each state advocated
by Kant and of that generally portrayed as the most desirable in our own
time. As this is one of the themes expanded upon at greatest length within
Kant’s essay, it seems worth elaborating further here.
Kant proclaims that each state should have a republican constitution, and
while it is not entirely clear what precisely this might amount to, Kant is
nevertheless explicit on what it is not. He is particularly concerned to
expose "…the common error of confusing the republican with the democratic
constitution," as the latter type lies furthest of all from Kant’s ideal.
While the ‘republican’ and the ‘democratic’ are seen to belong to different
categories (the former referring to the form of government, the latter to
the form of sovereignty), they come into direct conflict due to the fact
that a ‘democratic’ form of sovereignty is seen of necessity to entail a
‘despotic’ rather than ‘republican’ form of government. This terminological
matrix is complex, and in some ways at odds with the manner in which many of
these words are employed today. The term ‘democracy’, in particular, is used
to mean the government of the majority of the people, rather than the
election, by the majority of the people, of a sovereign group from amongst
the class of career politicians. From this point of view, Kant would
doubtless find no ‘democracies’ amongst our present range of governments.
Nevertheless, his remarks on democracy have a considerable bearing on the
increasing tendency in certain western countries to govern on populist
principles, taking focus groups and referenda as indicative of the will of
the majority.
Kant’s objection to ‘democracy’, then, is that "…democracy, in the proper
sense of the word, is of necessity despotism, because it establishes an
executive power, since all decree regarding – and, if need be, against – any
individual who dissents from them." By contrast, republicanism entails
"…severing the executive power of the government from the legislature." In
other words, if the majority legislate, they should not then execute that
legislation; there is consequently a need for a separate sovereign (or
sovereign group) to perform this task in accordance with republican
principles. These principles embody "…the spirit of a representative
system," which is by definition impossible under a democratic government, as
"…the "whole people", so-called, who carry their measure are really not all,
but only a majority: so that here the universal will is in contradiction
with itself and with the principle of freedom." Kant’s solution, then,
resembles in outward form that of Hobbes : "…the smaller the staff of the
executive – that is to say, the number of rulers – and the more real, on the
other hand, their representation of the people, so much more is the
government of the state in accordance with a possible republicanism…" In
other words, Kant argues that it is better to hope of one ruler that they
will prove benign and follow the course of duty as revealed by reason,
namely to represent the whole of the people, than to abandon the possibility
of republican principles by entrusting legislative and executive power to
the majority. The moral purpose of a sovereign is therefore to provide a
focus through which the will of the whole people who populate a state may
become united, whereas government by majority is seen to be an essentially
divisive process.
Part of the value of this argument for us today is that it challenges our
assumptions regarding the political terminology we have come to adopt
unquestioningly, and prompts us to ask in what respect our own political
systems are ‘republican’ or ‘democratic’. After all, given the ideological
charge carried by this latter term in particular, it is instructive to see
its original semantic principles stated and challenged. However, perhaps the
over-riding message to emerge from Kant’s meticulous examination of forms of
government is once more the central role reserved for faith and idealism in
bringing about perpetual peace. Many readers may deem the premises – benign
sovereigns, the designs of Nature, the power of reason – too implausible to
merit much consideration. Nevertheless, this is the very essence of the
conundrum posed by Kant – perpetual peace is simultaneously both a chimera
and a concrete vision. His essay, protesting perhaps overmuch the practical
prospects of perpetual peace, is first and foremost an attempt to inspire
his readers with a sense of moral purpose to bring about the desired end,
and as such, his essay is as relevant today as it has ever been.
Reference:
Kant, Immanuel, 1992 [reprint of the original English edition of 1903], tr.
M. Campbell Smith, Bristol: Thoemmes
Caspian Richards
University of Aberdeen, Scotland
E-mail:
http://www.paideusis.matco.ro/e1n2cr.html
http://www.constitution.org/kant/perpeace.htm
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