Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay
than in acting as if such ideas of reason have objective validity and
there be an immortal life in which man shall live according to the
laws of reason, in peace with his neighbour and in freedom from the
trammels of sense.
[61] It is _eine unausführbare Idee_. See the passage quoted from
the _Rechtslehre_, p. 129, _note_.
Hence we are concerned here, not with an end, but with the means by
which we might best set about attaining it, if it were attainable.
This is the subject matter of the _Treatise on Perpetual Peace_
(1795), a less eloquent and less purely philosophical essay than that
of 1784, but throughout more systematic and practical. We have to do,
not with the favourite dream of philanthropists like St. Pierre and
Rousseau, but with a statement of the conditions on the fulfilment of
which the transition to a reign of peace and law depends.
_The Conditions of the Realisation of the Kantian Ideal._
These means are of two kinds. In the first place, what evils must
we set about removing? What are the negative conditions? And,
secondly, what are the general positive conditions which will make
the realisation of this idea possible and guarantee the permanence
of an international peace once attained? These negative and
positive conditions Kant calls Preliminary and Definitive Articles
respectively, the whole essay being carefully thrown into the form of
a treaty. The Preliminary Articles of a treaty for perpetual peace
are based on the principle that anything that hinders or threatens
the peaceful co-existence of nations must be abolished. These
conditions have been classified by Kuno Fischer. Kant, he points
out,[62] examines the principles of right governing the different
sets of circumstances in which nations find themselves—namely, (_a_)
while they are actually at war; (_b_) when the time comes to conclude
a treaty of peace; (_c_) when they are living in a state of peace.
The six Preliminary Articles fall naturally into these groups. War
must not be conducted in such a manner as to increase national
hatred and embitter a future peace. (Art. 6.)[63] The treaty which
brings hostilities to an end must be concluded in an honest desire
for peace. (Art. 1.)[64] Again a nation, when in a state of peace,
must do nothing to threaten the political independence of another
nation or endanger its existence, thereby giving the strongest of
all motives for a fresh war. A nation may commit this injury in
two ways: (1) indirectly, by causing danger to others through the
growth of its standing army (Art. 3)[65]—always a menace to the
state of peace—or by any unusual war preparations: and (2) through
too great a supremacy of another kind, by amassing money, the
most powerful of all weapons in warfare. The National Debt (Art.
4)[66] is another standing danger to the peaceful co-existence of
nations. But, besides, we have the danger of actual attack. There
is no right of intervention between nations. (Art. 5.)[67] Nor can
states be inherited or conquered (Art. 2),[68] or in any way treated
in a manner subversive of their independence and sovereignty as
individuals. For a similar reason, armed troops cannot be hired and
sold as things.
[62] _Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, (4th ed., 1899), Vol.
V., I. Ch. 12, p. 168 _seq._
[63] See p. 114.
[64] See p. 107.
[65] See p. 110.
[66] See p. 111.
[67] See p. 112.
[68] See p. 108.
These then are the negative conditions of peace.[69] There are,
besides, three positive conditions:
[69] A large part of Kant’s requirements as they are expressed in
these Preliminary Articles has already been fulfilled. The first
(Art. 1) is recognised in theory at least by modern international
law. More cannot be said. A treaty of this kind is of necessity
more or less forced by the stronger on the weaker. The formal
ratification of peace in 1871 did not prevent France from longing
for the day when she might win back Alsace-Lorraine and be
revenged on Prussia. Not the treaty nor a consciousness of defeat
has kept the peace west of the Rhine, but a reluctant respect for
the fortress of Metz and the mighty army of united Germany.
Articles 2 and 6 are already commonplaces of international
law. Article 2 refers to practices which have not survived the
gradual disappearance of dynastic war. Art. 6 is the basis of
our modern law of war. Art. 3 has been fulfilled in the literal
sense that the standing armies composed of mercenary troops to
which Kant alludes exist no longer. But it is to be feared that
Kant would not think that we have made things much better, nor
regard our present system of progressive armaments as a step in
the direction of perpetual peace. Art. 4 is not likely to be
fulfilled in the near future. It is long since Cobden denounced
the institution of National Debts—an institution which, as Kant
points out, owes its origin to the English, the “commercial
people” referred to in the text. Art. 5 no doubt came to Kant
through Vattel. “No nation,” says the Swiss publicist, (_Law of
Nations_, II. Ch. iv. § 54) “has the least right to interfere
with the government of another,” unless, he adds, (Ch. v. §
70) in a case of anarchy or where the well-being of the human
race demands it. This is a recognised principle of modern
international law. Intervention is held to be justifiable only
where the obligation to respect another’s freedom of action comes
into conflict with the duty of self-preservation.
Puffendorf leaves much more room for the exercise of benevolence.
The natural affinity and kinship between men is, says he, (_Les
Devoirs de l’homme et du citoien_, II. Ch. xvi. § xi.) “a
sufficient reason to authorise us to take up defence of every
person whom one sees unjustly oppressed, when he implores our
aid _and when we can do it conveniently_.” (The italics are
mine.—[Tr.])
(_a_) The intercourse of nations is to be confined to a right of
hospitality. (Art. 3.)[70] There is nothing new to us in this
assertion of a right of way. The right to free means of international
communication has in the last hundred years become a commonplace of
law. And the change has been brought about, as Kant anticipated,
not through an abstract respect for the idea of right, but through
the pressure of purely commercial interests. Since Kant’s time
the nations of Europe have all been more or less transformed from
agricultural to commercial states whose interests run mainly in the
same direction, whose existence and development depend necessarily
upon “conditions of universal hospitality.” Commerce depends upon
this freedom of international intercourse, and on commerce mainly
depends our hope of peace.
[70] See p. 137. The main principle involved in this passage
comes from Vattel (_op. cit._, II. Ch. viii. §§ 104, 105: Ch. ix.
§§ 123, 125). A sovereign, he says, cannot object to a stranger
entering his state who at the same time respects its laws. No one
can be quite deprived of the right of way which has been handed
down from the time when the whole earth was common to all men.
(_b_) The first Definitive Article[71] requires that the constitution
of every state should be republican. What Kant understands by this
term is that, in the state, law should rule above force and that
its constitution should be a representative one, guaranteeing
public justice and based on the freedom and equality of its members
and their mutual dependence on a common legislature. Kant’s demand
is independent of the _form_ of the government. A constitutional
monarchy like that of Prussia in the time of Frederick the Great,
who regarded himself as the first servant of the state and ruled
with the wisdom and forethought which the nation would have had
the right to demand from such an one—such a monarchy is not in
contradiction to the idea of a true republic. That the state should
have a constitution in accordance with the principles of right is
the essential point.[72] To make this possible, the law-giving
power must lie with the representatives of the people: there must be
a complete separation, such as Locke and Rousseau demand, between
the legislature and executive. Otherwise we have despotism. Hence,
while Kant admitted absolutism under certain conditions, he rejected
democracy where, in his opinion, the mass of the people was despot.
[71] See p. 120.
[72] Kant believed that, in the newly formed constitution of the
United States, his ideal with regard to the external forms of
the state as conforming to the spirit of justice was most nearly
realised. Professor Paulsen draws attention, in the following
passage, to the fact that Kant held the English government of
the eighteenth century in very low esteem. (_Kant_, p. 357,
_note_. See Eng. trans., p. 352, _note_.) It was not the English
state, he says, which furnished Kant with an illustration of
his theory:—“Rather in it he sees a form of despotism only
slightly veiled, not Parliamentary despotism, as some people
have thought, but monarchical despotism. Through bribery of the
Commons and the Press, the King had actually absolute power, as
was evident, above all, from the fact that he had often waged war
without, and in defiance of, the will of the people. Kant has
a very unfavourable opinion of the English state in every way.
Among the collected notes written by him in the last ten years
of the century and published by Reicke (_Lose Blätter_, I. 129)
the following appears:—‘The English nation (_gens_) regarded as
a people (_populus_) and looked upon side by side with other
races is, as a collection of individuals, of all mankind the
most highly to be esteemed. But as a state, compared with other
states, it is the most destructive, high-handed and tyrannical,
and the most provocative of war among them all.’”
Kuno Fischer (_op. cit._, Vol. V., I. Ch. 11, pp. 150, 151) to
whom Professor Paulsen’s reference may here perhaps allude,
states that Kant’s objection to the English constitution is that
it was an oligarchy, Parliament being not only a legislative
body, but through its ministers also executive in the interests
of the ruling party or even of private individuals in that party.
It seems more likely that what most offended a keen observer of
the course of the American War of Independence was the arbitrary
and ill-directed power of the king. But see the passage quoted
by Fischer (pp. 152, 153) from the _Rechtslehre_ (Part II. Sect.
I.) which is, he says, unmistakeably directed against the English
constitution and certain temporary conditions in the political
history of the country.
An internal constitution, firmly established on the principles of
right, would not only serve to kill the seeds of national hatred and
diminish the likelihood of foreign war. It would do more: it would
destroy sources of revolution and discontent within the state. Kant,
like many writers on this subject, does not directly allude to civil
war[73] and the means by which it may be prevented or abolished.
Actually to achieve this would be impossible: it is beyond the
power of either arbitration or disarmament. But in a representative
government and the liberty of a people lie the greatest safeguards
against internal discontent. Civil peace and international peace must
to a certain extent go hand in hand.
[73] St. Pierre actually thought that his federation would
prevent civil war. See _Project_ (1714), p. 16.
We come now to the central idea of the treatise: (_c_) the law of
nations must be based upon a federation of free states. (Art. 2.)[74]
This must be regarded as the end to which mankind is advancing. The