Kant’s Political Theory (1): Preliminary Articles
The full subtitle for this posting is “Introduction and Six Preliminary Articles en route to the Guarantee of Perpetual Peace.” This posting is the first of three installments reviewing Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace, A Philosophical Sketch, written in 1795. An introduction and Kant’s six preliminary articles for perpetual peace are provided in here. Subsequently, there will be one posting for the three definitive articles and one posting for the guarantee of perpetual peace.
Starting Perpetual Peace with a rhetorical flourish, Kant asks whether a painting of a cemetery is more emblematic of people in general, of heads of state who can never be satiated with warfare, or of philosophers who view death as a sweet dream. Kant then proceeds to his Section (Abschnitt) 1, which discusses six “preliminary articles” or empirical principles that, if universally instantiated, would ensure perpetual peace among states. Next, Section 2 presents a political theory from which derive three “definitive articles” or rational principles that would likewise ensure perpetual peace. Finally, a section labeled “Addition” (Zusatz) presents a teleological theory in which perpetual peace is guaranteed: A mechanism of nature will inexorably establish perpetual peace even if mankind allows competing inclinations and dispositions to overshadow its moral imperative to extirpate warfare. [Some editions of Perpetual Peace contain a second “Addition” that we shall not consider; nor shall we consider Kant’s pair of Appendices (Anhänge).]
Kant’s six preliminary articles for perpetual peace are: No peace treaty should be concluded with secret reservations that could cause a future war. No existing state should be acquired by another state by inheritance, exchange, purchase, or donation. No standing armies should be tolerated. No national debt should be incurred to fund war chests. No state should interfere in the constitution and government of another state. No state should commit wartime acts of such hostility that all future, post-war relations would be poisoned.
Kant’s political theory starts from the principle that the natural state of individuals or peoples who live in proximity to one another is either actual or threatened warfare. Some type of civil law and enforcement power must be established to prevent hostile acts among persons, defined as individuals within a people, who aspire to create a well-defined nation-state; or as nation-states themselves within the international community; or as cosmopolitan “visitors” seeking “hospitality” from peoples or nation-states within a universal, abstract state of mankind.
As Kant notes in the first footnote of his Section 2, if another individual in my neighborhood deprives me of my security by not subjecting himself to a common constitutional arrangement, then I can force him either to enter into a legal relationship with me or else to disappear from my neighborhood! (Ich kann ihn nötigen, entweder mit mir in einen gemeinschaftlich-gesetzlichen Zustand zu treten, oder aus meiner Nachbarschaft zu weichen.) Such enforced agreement to form a constitutional system is the so-called original contract, which leads a group of interacting persons reciprocally to renounce some natural rights for the sake of mutual peace. There are three types of constitution corresponding, respectively, to civil law (Staatsbürgerrecht) for individuals, international law (Völkerrecht) for nation-states, or cosmopolitan law (Weltbürgerrecht) for individuals interacting with foreign peoples or nation-states.
Kant’s three determinative articles for perpetual peace will be discussed in next month’s posting.