Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay
sovereign, and return to that state during revolution. But, for
Rousseau, this sovereign authority is the people: a revolution
would be only a change of ministry. (See _Cont. Soc._, III. Ch.
xviii.) Again Locke holds revolution to be justifiable in all
cases where the governments have not fulfilled the trust reposed
by the people in them. (Cf. Kant’s _Perpetual Peace_, p. 188,
_note_).
[53] “If you unite many men,” writes Rousseau, (_Cont. Soc._, IV.
I.) “and consider them as one body, they will have but one will;
and that will must be to promote the common safety and general
well-being of all.” This _volonté générale_, the common element
of all particular wills, cannot be in conflict with any of them.
(_Op. cit._, II. iii.)
[54] In Eng. trans., see p. 348.
In this civil union, self-sought, yet sought reluctantly, man is able
to turn his most unlovable qualities to a profitable use. They bind
this society together. They are the instrument by which he wins for
himself self-culture. It is here with men, says Kant, as it is with
the trees in a forest: “just because each one strives to deprive the
other of air and sun, they compel each other to seek both above,
and thus they grow beautiful and straight. Whereas those that, in
freedom and isolation from one another, shoot out their branches at
will, grow stunted and crooked and awry.” (Proposition 5, _op. cit._)
Culture, art, and all that is best in the social order are the fruits
of that self-loving unsociableness in man.
The problem of the establishment of a perfect civil constitution
cannot be solved, says this treatise (_Idea for a Universal
History_), until the external relations of states are regulated
in accordance with principles of right. For, even if the ideal
internal constitution were attained, what end would it serve in the
evolution of humanity, if commonwealths themselves were to remain
like individuals in a state of nature, each existing in uncontrolled
freedom, a law unto himself? This condition of things again cannot
be permanent. Nature uses the same means as before to bring about a
state of law and order. War, present or near at hand, the strain
of constant preparation for a possible future campaign or the heavy
burden of debt and devastation left by the last,—these are the evils
which must drive states to leave a lawless, savage state of nature,
hostile to man’s inward development, and seek in union the end of
nature, peace. All wars are the attempts nature makes to bring about
new political relations between nations, relations which, in their
very nature, cannot be, and are not desired to be, permanent. These
combinations will go on succeeding each other, until at last a
federation of all powers is formed for the establishment of perpetual
peace. This is the end of humanity, demanded by reason. Justice
will reign, not only in the state, but in the whole human race when
perpetual peace exists between the nations of the world.
This is the point of view of the _Idea for a Universal History_. But
equally, we may say, law and justice will reign between nations,
when a legally and morally perfect constitution adorns the state.
External perpetual peace presupposes internal peace—peace civil,
social, economic, religious. Now, when men are perfect—and what
would this be but perfection—how can there be war? Cardinal Fleury’s
only objection—no light one—to St. Pierre’s project was that, as
even the most peace-loving could not avoid war, all men must first
be men of noble character. This seems to be what is required in
the treatise on _Perpetual Peace_. Kant demands, to a certain
extent, the moral regeneration of man. There must be perfect honesty
in international dealings, good faith in the interpretation and
fulfilment of treaties and so on (Art. 1)[55]: and again, every state
must have a republican constitution—a term by which Kant understands
a constitution as nearly as possible in accordance with the spirit
of right. (Art. 1.)[56] This is to say that we have to start with
our reformation at home, look first to the culture and education
and morals of our citizens, then to our foreign relations. This is
a question of self-interest as well as of ethics. On the civil and
religious liberty of a state depends its commercial success. Kant
saw the day coming, when industrial superiority was to be identified
with political pre-eminence. The state which does not look to the
enlightenment and liberty of its subjects must fail in the race. But
the advantages of a high state of civilisation are not all negative.
The more highly developed the individuals who form a state, the more
highly developed is its consciousness of its obligations to other
nations. In the ignorance and barbarism of races lies the great
obstacle to a reign of law among states. Uncivilised states cannot
be conceived as members of a federation of Europe. First, the
perfect civil constitution according to right: then the federation of
these law-abiding Powers. This is the path which reason marks out.
The treatise on _Perpetual Peace_ seems to be in this respect more
practical than the _Idea for a Universal History_. But it matters
little which way we take it. The point of view is the same in both
cases: the end remains the development of man towards good, the order
of his steps in this direction is indifferent.
[55] See p. 107.
[56] See p. 120.
_The Political and Social Conditions of Kant’s Time._
The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, Kant regards
as the realisation of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a
political constitution internally and externally perfect—the only
condition under which the faculties of man can be fully developed.
Does experience support this theory? Kant thought that, to a certain
degree, it did. This conviction was not, however, a fruit of his
experience of citizenship in Prussia, an absolute dynastic state,
a military monarchy waging perpetual dynastic wars of the kind he
most hotly condemned. Kant had no feeling of love to Prussia,[57]
and little of a citizen’s patriotic pride, or even interest, in its
political achievements. This was partly because of his sympathy with
republican doctrines: partly due to his love of justice and peculiar
hatred of war,[58] a hatred based, no doubt, not less on principle
than on a close personal experience of the wretchedness it brings
with it. It was not the political and social conditions in which he
lived which fostered Kant’s love of liberty and gave him inspiration,
unless in the sense in which the mind reacts upon surrounding
influences. Looking beyond Prussia to America, in whose struggle
for independence he took a keen interest, and looking to France
where the old dynastic monarchy had been succeeded by a republican
state, Kant seemed to see the signs of a coming democratisation of
the old monarchical society of Europe. In this growing influence on
the state of the mass of the people who had everything to lose in
war and little to gain by victory, he saw the guarantee of a future
perpetual peace. Other forces too were at work to bring about this
consummation. There was a growing consciousness that war, this costly
means of settling a dispute, is not even a satisfactory method of
settlement. Hazardous and destructive in its effect, it is also
uncertain in its results. Victory is not always gain; it no longer
signifies a land to be plundered, a people to be sold to slavery. It
brings fresh responsibilities to a nation, at a time when it is not
always strong enough to bear them. But, above all, Kant saw, even at
the end of the eighteenth century, the nations of Europe so closely
bound together by commercial interests that a war—and especially a
maritime war where the scene of conflict cannot be to the same extent
localised as on land—between any two of them could not but seriously
affect the prosperity of the others.[59] He clearly realised that
the spirit of commerce was the strongest force in the service of the
maintenance of peace, and that in it lay a guarantee of future union.
[57] Unlike Hegel whose ideal was the Prussian state, as it was
under Frederick the Great. An enthusiastic supporter of the power
of monarchy, he showed himself comparatively indifferent to the
progress of constitutional liberty.
[58] Isolated passages are sometimes quoted from Kant in support
of a theory that the present treatise is at least half ironical[A]
and that his views on the question of perpetual peace did not
essentially differ from those of Leibniz. “Even war,” he says,
(_Kritik d. Urteilskraft_, I. Book ii. § 28.) “when conducted in
an orderly way and with reverence for the rights of citizens has
something of the sublime about it, and the more dangers a nation
which wages war in this manner is exposed to and can courageously
overcome, the nobler does its character grow. While, on the other
hand, a prolonged peace usually has the effect of giving free
play to a purely commercial spirit, and side by side with this,
to an ignoble self-seeking, to cowardice and effeminacy; and the
result of this is generally a degradation of national character.”
[A] Cf. K. v. Stengel: _Der Ewige Friede_, Munich, 1899; also
Vaihinger: _Kantstudien_, Vol. IV., p. 58.
This is certainly an admission that war which does not violate
the Law of Nations has a good side as well as a bad. We could
look for no less in so clear-sighted and unprejudiced a thinker.
Kant would have been the first to admit that under certain
conditions a nation can have no higher duty than to wage war.
War is necessary, but it is in contradiction to reason and the
spirit of right. The “scourge of mankind,” “making more bad men
than it takes away,” the “destroyer of every good,” Kant calls it
elsewhere. (_Theory of Ethics_, Abbott’s trans., 4th ed., p. 341,
_note_.)
[59] Cf. _Idea for a Universal History_, Prop. 8; _Perpetual
Peace_, pp. 142, 157.
This scheme of a federation of the nations of the world, in
accordance with principles which would put an end to war between
them, was one whose interest for Kant seemed to increase during the
last twenty years of his life.[60] It was according to him an idea
of reason, and, in his first essay on the subject—that of 1784—we
see the place this ideal of a perpetual peace held in the Kantian
system of philosophy. Its realisation is the realisation of the
highest good—the ethical and political _summum bonum_, for here the
aims of morals and politics coincide: only in a perfect development
of his faculties in culture and in morals can man at last find true
happiness. History is working towards the consummation of this end. A
moral obligation lies on man to strive to establish conditions which
bring its realisation nearer. It is the duty of statesmen to form a
federative union as it was formerly the duty of individuals to enter
the state. The moral law points the way here as clearly as in the
sphere of pure ethics:—“Thou can’st, therefore thou ought’st.”
[60] The immediate stimulus to Kant’s active interest in this
subject as a practical question was the Peace of Basle (1795)
which ended the first stage in the series of wars which followed
the French Revolution.
Let us be under no misapprehension as to Kant’s attitude to the
problem of perpetual peace. It is an ideal. He states plainly that he
so regards it[61] and that as such it is unattainable. But this is
the essence of all ideals: they have not the less value in shaping
the life and character of men and nations on that account. They are
not ends to be realised but ideas according to which we must live,
regulative principles. We cannot, says Kant, shape our life better