Five-minute digest
Perpetual Peace
Summary
Perpetual Peace (Zum ewigen Frieden) is a short philosophical essay by Immanuel Kant, published at Königsberg in 1795, a few months after Prussia made a separate peace with revolutionary France at Basel. Kant cast it, with a touch of irony, in the form of a peace treaty. He opens with a joke about a Dutch innkeeper's sign bearing the words 'perpetual peace' above a picture of a churchyard, and with a mock 'saving clause' asking practical statesmen not to take offence at a mere theorist. The First Section lays down six preliminary articles, conditions that would remove the immediate causes of war: no peace treaty is valid if it secretly reserves material for a future war; no independent state may be acquired by inheritance, exchange, purchase or gift; standing armies shall in time be abolished; no national debts shall be contracted for external affairs; no state shall violently interfere in the constitution and government of another; and no state at war shall use methods, such as assassins, poisoners or incitement to treason, that would make trust impossible in a later peace. The Second Section gives three definitive articles. The civil constitution of every state shall be republican, by which Kant means a representative government under law that separates the executive from the legislative power; such a state is inclined to peace, he argues, because citizens who must bear the costs of war will hesitate to vote for it. The law of nations shall be founded on a federation of free states, a league for preserving peace rather than a single world state. And cosmopolitan right shall be limited to universal hospitality: a stranger may visit any land without being treated as an enemy, but has no right to settle there uninvited, and Kant censures the conduct of trading nations that entered distant lands as if they belonged to no one. A First Supplement argues that nature itself guarantees progress toward peace, since war has scattered people over the earth, forced them into states, and commerce and the separation of languages and religions keep them in balance; even a race of devils, if intelligent, could organize a state. A Second Supplement, added in the 1796 edition, proposes one secret article: states should consult the opinions of philosophers. Two appendices discuss the relation of morals and politics, distinguishing the moral politician from the political moralist and offering a principle of publicity: an action affecting others' rights is wrong if its maxim cannot be made public. The library text is Mary Campbell Smith's 1903 English translation, with Robert Latta's preface and her long historical introduction surveying earlier peace plans from Dante to the Abbé de Saint-Pierre and Rousseau.
Top Lessons
Peace as a matter of right, not only of feeling
Kant does not appeal to sentiment or philanthropy. He asks what legal arrangements, within states, between states and among all people, would make lasting peace possible, and he treats peace as something reason commands rather than a dream. The structure of articles makes the argument concrete.
Who decides on war?
The first definitive article rests on a simple observation: where those who must fight and pay for a war must consent to it, they will weigh it carefully, whereas a ruler who owns the state can decide on war for trifling reasons, as if it were a pleasure party. Kant's republic is not rule by the crowd but representative government under law.
A league, not an empire
Kant considers whether peace would be best secured by merging all nations into one world state and decides against it: nations do not want it, and vast states tend toward despotism. He proposes instead a voluntary federation of free states that grows over time.
Honesty and statecraft
The appendices ask whether politics must be cunning. Kant rejects the maxims of seizing advantage and denying wrongs afterward, and proposes a test of publicity: a policy that could not survive being announced is unjust. The moral politician fits his conduct to principle and waits for favourable circumstances rather than forcing them.
Verified Quotes
“No treaty of peace shall be regarded as valid, if made with the secret reservation of material for a future war.”
“The civil constitution of each state shall be republican.”
“If, as must be so under this constitution, the consent of the subjects is required to determine whether there shall be war or not, nothing is more natural than that they should weigh the matter well, before undertaking such a bad business.”
“The law of nations shall be founded on a federation of free states.”
“a violation of right in one part of the world is felt all over it.”
“The problem of the formation of the state, hard as it may sound, is not insoluble, even for a race of devils, granted that they have intelligence.”
“Seek ye first the kingdom of pure practical reason and its righteousness, and the object of your endeavour, the blessing of perpetual peace, will be added unto you.”
“All actions relating to the rights of other men are wrong, if the maxims from which they follow are inconsistent with publicity.”
Medical Lens
A political and philosophical essay on war and peace with no medical subject matter.