Kant’s Political Theory (3): Perpetual Peace

The full subtitle for this posting is “Recapitulation, Commentary, and the Guarantee of Perpetual Peace.”  This posting is the third of three installments reviewing Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace, A Philosophical Sketch (1795).

By way of background: Natural objects, like rocks, may serve extrinsic, utilitarian purposes, such as keeping doors open.  Other natural objects, known as natural ends, have intrinsic purposes and characteristic cause-effect relationships, in which the effect is part of the cause.  [See § 62 - 68 in Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790), as well as Sections I.II.3 and I.II.6.3 in my book An Initial View of Final Causes (2017), described elsewhere on this website.]  Biological organisms are natural ends. For example, an acorn grows by mechanistic means (efficient causes, today known to include DNA processes) into an instance of the form of an oak.  The form is the final cause (Naturzweck) of the growth.  At a higher level of abstraction, the kingdom of nature itself might be said to have an ultimate, providential cause (Endzweck der Schöpfung).

By way of recapitulation and commentary: Kant should have recognized that peoples and nations are natural objects of a sort, produced by the efficient mechanisms of language-formation, common history, cultural achievement, religious experience, and political events.  In addition, the vision of speakers, actors, cultural innovators, and religious leaders; and the leadership of influential monarchs, aristocrats, and populists have served as final causes for peoples and nations.  However, Kant’s political contract theory downplays history and focuses entirely on the idea that the natural state of neighbors (individuals or nation-states) is either actual or threatened warfare.  Kantian neighbors either must agree upon some common constitutional system or else be forcibly ejected from each other’s neighborhood. Kantian neighbors do reciprocally renounce some natural rights for the sake of mutual peace.  This leaves open the question whether any neighbors might reciprocally renounce other natural rights for the sake of culture, language, or religion; leading to great differences among nation-states; and culminating in grave difficulties in forming the league of nations favored by Kant (see the second posting in this series).  

By way of exposition on the guarantee of perpetual peace: According to the “Addition” section of Kant’s 1795 essay, that which guarantees perpetual peace is nothing less than the great artist, nature, from whose merely mechanical operations shines forth the purposiveness (design) required to generate political concord from discordant individual wills.  Nature’s purposiveness can be considered to be a necessitation of natural law according to an unknown cause (destiny, fate, or Schicksal); or to be a deep wisdom of a higher, predetermining cause directed to the objective final end of the human race (providence or Vorsehung).

As a technical matter, Kant believed that providence must be “thought into” nature by reflective judgment during the conceptualization of purposes immediately prescribed by reason; and not recognized, inferred, or known from experience in any strict sense.  Any claim that providence is knowable, Kant thought, would imply, presumptuously, that one could put on the wings of Icarus in order to come closer to the secret of nature’s inscrutable design.  

Now we come to the question of what nature has done, or at least of what our reflective judgment leads us to believe that nature has done, to enforce perpetual peace in case mankind does not respond to its moral duty to renounce some rights for the sake of peace.  How does nature aid the establishment of constitutions appropriate for civil, international, and cosmopolitan law? Kant offers three numbered sections paralleling his three determinative articles for perpetual peace mentioned in the second posting in this tripartite series.

1.  Even if a recognizable group of people does not choose to submit to civil law (Staatsbürgerrecht) because of discord among its individuals, nature, in the form of actual or threatened warfare from outsiders, will eventually require that people’s submission to civil law.  If that civil law establishes a republican form of government with its separation of powers, then there is the best chance for political concord to arise from the cancellation of selfish, opposing, and ruinous individual inclinations.  Individuals are forced to be good citizens even if not morally good persons. Nature inexorably wills that the right will prevail.

2.  The idea of international law (Völkerrecht) presupposes the existence of independent nation-states, because the amalgamation of nation-states under one superior power, Kant believed, leads to soulless despotism.  National “identity politics” implies the futility of attempting to fuse nation-states into a higher-order state. Even though reason may prescribe the existence of exactly one all-encompassing Weltrepublic, the reality of nation-states jealous of their identity implies that only a league of nations is achievable.  Nature enforces the separation of states by differences in language, religion, and culture. Nature, in the form of actual or threatened warfare between nation-states, will eventually force those nation-states to submit to international law.

3.  The idea of cosmopolitan law (Weltbürgerrecht) is the necessary completion, albeit in an unwritten code, of civil law and of international law.  Moreover, nature unites some peoples, for whom the concept of cosmopolitan law might not have secured peace, by offering a principle of reciprocal self-interest (wechselseitgen Eigennutz) or spirit of commerce (Handelsgeist), which will ultimately empower every people.  The power of money (Geldmacht) may be nature’s most reliable means to promote a noble peace.

In this manner, Kant concludes, nature guarantees perpetual peace by the mechanism of human inclinations, away from actual or threatened military conflict, and toward what can serve as their substitutes, economic competition and the power of money.  Military and economic conflict ensures the development of a league of nations to limit that conflict. This guarantee does not come with a security sufficient to predict the future; but it suffices for the practical purpose, which is also a duty, of working towards the end of perpetual peace, which is anything but chimerical.

Today, of course, one may note that the economic development of late 19th century Europe made the prospect of European warfare unthinkable, until World War I occurred.  Thereafter, the combined effects of the League of Nations, disarmament treaties, and general appeasement were incapable of preventing World War II.  For promoting peace, it is not clear that trans-national institutions fare better than a balance of power between nation-states.

Kant's Political Theory (2): Determinative Articles

The full subtitle for this posting is “Three Determinative Articles en route to the Guarantee of Perpetual Peace.”  This posting is the second of three installments reviewing Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace, A Philosophical Sketch (1795).

In the subsection on his first determinative article (rational principle) for perpetual peace, Kant stated his taxonomy of political organization: A state can be classified according to its form of sovereignty (autocratic, aristocratic, or democratic) or according to its form of government (republican or despotic).  In a republic, the legislative assembly is representative and is separated from the executive power of the ruler, whereas a despot both makes and executes the laws.  Kant believed that, except possibly in some cases of violent revolution, democratic sovereignty leads to despotic government by founding an executive power of a small committee over a large community.  Democratic republics are, for Kant, an unlikely species.  In contrast, monarchical or aristocratic sovereignty offers the possibility of gradual legal reform culminating in republican government.  After all, the Prussian King Frederick II supposedly said that he was merely the highest-ranking servant of the state.

Kant’s first determinative article is: The civil constitution of every state, i.e., its form of government, is to be republican.  Kant thinks that only republican constitutions are consistent with the idea of the original contract (individuals giving up some natural rights to a ruler, who enforces peace) and its basic principles of freedom, equality, and dependence upon a single legislative source.  The republican constitution has favorable prospects for creating perpetual peace, because a republic’s citizens must vote to adopt the costs of warfare; whereas a despotism’s subjects have no voice in authorizing the dreadful tasks of financing, fighting, and dying in a war.

Each individual’s juridical equality is the right to be constrained only to the extent that others are so constrained.  Each individual’s juridical freedom is the authority or power to obey only those laws to which he either has consented or could have consented, either freely or under threat of “being thrown out of the neighborhood” (see the first blog post in this series).  Focusing now on the question of “has consented” versus “could have consented,” we see in Kant’s first footnote in his subsection on the first determinative article that “Rechtliche Freiheit … ist die Befugnis, keinen äuβeren Gesetzen zu gehorchen, als zu denen ich meine Beistimmung habe geben können.”  In the indicative mood, therefore, obedience is limited to laws “to which I have been able [in fact] to give my consent.”  In the subjunctive mood, however, obedience is limited to laws “to which I could have given my consent [even if I did not actually consent].”  Only Kant knew whether he meant to use the indicative or subjunctive mood when he wrote that sentence.  Either way, it seems clear that the original contract is not one occurrence in the past, but is rather the cumulative effect of a period of negotiation, force, and agreement.  

Kant’s second determinative article for perpetual peace is: International law is to be founded on a federation of free states.  Peoples (Völker), to the extent that they are civilized enough to form nation-states (Staaten), can be evaluated like individual human beings.  Each nation-state that can potentially be injured by other nation-states due to their mere proximity can and should demand from its neighbors that they all enter into a higher-order constitution analogous to that of the constitution for individuals within one nation-state.  Such a higher-order constitution must form a league of nations (Völkerbund) but not a higher-order state consisting of blended peoples (Völkerstaat).  (In his Universal History of 1784, Kant had written of a Staatsverbindung as that which is opposed to a league of nations.  See the March 1, 2019 blog posting.)

Each nation-state contains its own relationship between its lawgiving class and its Volk (be they citizens or subjects), which results in the nation-state’s persisting identity.  In effect, Kant adopted an early version of identity politics by saying that nation-states should not be melded or fused together in a higher-order nation-state (nicht in einem Staat zusammenschmelzen sollen).  Thus, Kant speaks of his league of nations as a federation of free states.

One should think, Kant writes, that civilized peoples, each of which has already united into a nation-state, would hurry to exit an international system of crudeness, boorishness, animal-like degradation, and warfare in favor of the constitutional order of a league of nations.  Until now, however, this has been prevented by each nation-state’s view that its own majesty consists precisely in its own independence, i.e., in the fact that there is no other nation-state that can subject it to external legal compulsion.  Live free or die.  European and American savages differ only in that the latter eat their enemies while the former exploit them more efficiently.

The idea of federation is practical, Kant thinks, because if fortune should direct one powerful and enlightened people to form a republic (the form of government best positioned to ensure perpetual peace), then this fact would act as a nucleating point that incentivizes other nation-states eventually to join it in a league of nations.

Reason, by itself, presents nation-states with no other way to exit the lawless condition that contains nothing but warfare: Give up wild, lawless freedom; get used to public legal compulsion; and join in a continuously growing, higher-order state consisting of blended peoples.  In its purest form, this would be a world republic (Weltrepublik).  But to the extent that the counsel of reason is rejected by existing nation-states with their precious notions of independence and majesty, only a surrogate remains, viz., a league of nations.

Kant’s third determinative article for perpetual peace is: The law of world citizenship shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality.  The limitation is that we are not dealing with a Gastrecht (guest law, which would serve as a basis for a foreigner [Fremdling] to claim the status of a temporary “housemate” (Hausgenosse, co-resident, or, presumably, legal resident]), but rather with a Besuchsrecht (visitation law, which is a basis for any foreigner to seek a temporary level of hospitality).  Hospitality is the right of an individual, upon his arrival in a country not his own, not to be treated in a hostile fashion during a temporary period of probation, after which he may be turned away if this would not result in his demise.  In this manner (by recognizing visitation law) remote parts of the world can come into mutually peaceful relationships that eventually become public law and so bring the human race ever closer to a cosmopolitan constitution.  

Compared to such peaceful, cosmopolitan relationships, Kant views the inhospitable behavior of the civilized, preeminently commercial European states in oppressing the indigenous peoples of America, sub-Saharan Africa, the Spice Islands, and Southern Africa as injustice approaching terror.  In this regard Kant speaks of “the litany of all evil” (die Litanei aller Übel).  At least the more developed societies of the Far East have shown more resistance to European “visitors.”

The idea of cosmopolitan law (Weltbürgerrecht) is not a fanciful or outrageous form of imaginary rights, but is rather a necessary completion (in the form of an unwritten code) pertaining both to civil law (Staatsrecht) and to international law (Völkerrecht) and culminating in public human law in general (öffentlichen Menschenrechte überhaupt or “human rights”), and hence, in perpetual peace.

In conclusion, Kant deferred to no one in harshly criticizing existing European empires; but with his pure, a priori principle in his Universal History that “the natural capacities of rational beings will eventually be developed,” he called for an abstract cosmopolitan utopia that amounted to an empire of sorts.  Likewise, with his purest form of political contract theory in his Perpetual Peace, he called for a single, continuously growing, transnational state consisting of blended peoples in a world republic. Thus, at different times Kant aspired to a utopian imperialism and then to a utopian, transnational world republic.  He seems ultimately to have realized that the utopian empire and the utopian world republic would forever remain nowhere in the real world.  Kant held out hope, however, that his backup plan, a league of nations, would eventually stop warfare.  

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.