'Eternal peace' as the graveyard of the political: A critique of Kant's Zum Ewigen Frieden

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 36, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 513-531

  Behnke, Andreas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF READING   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 50249143442     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/03058298080360030701     Document Type: Article

References (97)

1. Only two English-language editions of Zum Ewigen Frieden translate it as Eternal Peace. In Eternal Peace and other International Essays by Immanuel Kant, transi. W. Hastie, BD, Introduction, Edwin D. Mead (Boston: The World Peace Foundation, 1914), 'perpetual' and 'eternal' are used interchangeably. Wolfgang Schwarz insists on the usage of 'eternal' rather than 'perpetual' for reasons that echo my argument in this essay, if from an affirmative rather than critical point of view: 'Those who have rendered Kant's ewig by "perpetual" seem to prefer a one-sided mechanistic view (which is not Kant's and cannot know the problem of peace at all) to the complete aspect that acknowledges freedom and places the problem in the centre of man's practical situation. As distinguished from "perpetuity" - an indefinite or infinite extension in time - "eternity" can also designate the unlimited existence of a thing in a (theoretically inaccessible) nontemporal dimension, which opens up in man's moral consciousness. It is here that the idea of eternal peace is anchored as a concept of duty.'
2. Wolfgang Schwarz, Principles of Lawful Politics: An Annotated Translation of Immanuel Kant's Toward Eternal Peace (Aalen: Scienta Verlag, 1988), 42. Also, Carl Friedrich in his treatise on Kant refers to 'eternal peace'. Here too a metaphysical rather than 'mechanical' interpretation is suggested: 'Kant never wavered in his conviction that to work for peace was man's moral duty, to enjoy peace his natural end, and to achieve it his probable destiny'
3. Carl Joachim Friedrich, Inevitable Peace (New York, NY: Greenwood Press, 1969), xi.
4. Immanuel Kant, Zum Ewigen Frieden (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam Jun., 1984), 3.
5. The best systematic treatment of this problematique can be found in Naeem Inayatullah and David L. Blaney, International Relations and the Problem of Difference (New York, NY and London: Routledge, 2004).
6. On temporocentrism see David L. Blaney and Naeem Inayatullah, 'The Savage Smith and the Temporal Walls of Capitalism' in Classical Theory in International Relations, ed. Beate Jahn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 123-55.
7. William E. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
8. William E. Connolly, 'Speed, Concentric Cultures, and Cosmopolitanism', Political Theory, 28, no. 5 (2000): 596-18.
9. Rosemary Shinko, 'Agonistic Politics: The Productive Ethical Excess in International Relations'. Working draft prepared for presentation at ISA Annual Conference, San Diego, CA, March 21-24, 2006.
10. George Santayana, Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (London: Constable and Company Ltd, 1922), 101-2.
11. Ibid., 102.
12. Ibid., 102.
13. Ibid., 105.
14. George Cavallar, Kant and the Theory and Practice of International Right (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999), 54.
15. Immanuel Kant, 'Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch' in Kant: Political Writings, ed. H.S. Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 100.
16. Ibid., 100.
17. Ibid., 103.
18. Ibid., 100.
19. Ibid., 105.
20. Ibid., 105.
21. Ibid., 102.
22. Ibid., 103.
23. Ibid., 104.
24. My analysis here differs from Beate Jahn's who sees the three Definitive Articles as particular solutions to the empirical and historical causes of war on the domestic, international and transnational level, respectively. See Beate Jahn, 'Classical Smoke, Classical Mirrors: Kant and Mill in Liberal International Relations Theory' in Classical Theory in International Relations, ed. Jahn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 185. My analysis here focuses on Kant's treatment of war in terms of its relationship to (transcendental) Reason.
25. Kant, 'Perpetual Peace', 99-100.
26. Ibid., 100.
27. Cavallar, Theory and Practice, 77.
28. Ibid., 79.
29. Kant, 'Perpetual Peace', 100.
30. Ibid., 114.
31. Ibid., 113.
32. Ibid., 104.
33. Cavallar, Theory and Practice, 4.
34. From a critical perspective, one might point out that Kant here introduces a structural aporia into the text that deconstructs it. On one hand, the morally superior constitution of a republic allows the expression of economic rationality (by its citizens) and hence leads to a pacific federation and towards eternal peace. On the other hand, in those non-republican states that join the federation, their economic rationality will over time lead to the constitution of a republic, through membership in the federation. Hence it is undecidable if morality leads to peace via economic rationality, or economic rationality to morality via peace.
35. Kant, 'Perpetual Peace', 110-11.
36. Ibid., 112.
37. Kant, 'Conjectures', 231.
38. Ibid., 232.
39. Ibid., 227.
40. Ibid., 228.
41. Michael Doyle, 'Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 1', Philosophy and Public Affairs 12, no. 3 (1983): 205-35;
42. 'Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 2', Philosophy and Public Affairs 12, no. 4 (1983): 323-53.
43. See the collections of articles in Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller (eds), Debating the Democratic Peace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996);
44. and more recently from a critical perspective Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey (eds), Democracy, Liberalism, and War (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001).
45. Thomas Risse-Kappen, 'Democratic Peace - Warlike Democracies? A Social Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument', European Journal of International Relations 1, no. 4:491-517.
46. John MacMillan, 'Immanuel Kant and the Democratic Peace' in Classical Theory in International Relations, ed. Jahn, 54.
47. Anne-Marie Burley [Slaughter], 'Law among Liberal States: Liberal Internationalism and the Act of State Doctrine', Columbia Law Review 92, no. 8 (1992): 1907-1996
48. 'Towards an Age of Liberal Nations', Harvard International Law Journal 33, 2 (1992): 393-405;
49. 'International Law and International Relations Theory: A Dual Agenda', American Journal of International Law 87, no. 2 (1993): 205-39;
50. Fernando Tesón, A Philosophy of International Law (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998).
51. Doyle, 'Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 1', 226.
52. This conflation can already be found in Friedrich, Inevitable Peace, 45.
53. Cavallar, Theory and Practice, 113-31.
54. Kant, Perpetual Peace, 104.
55. Antonio Franceschet, '"One Powerful and Enlightened Nation": Kant and the Quest for a Global Rule of Law' in Classical Theory in International Relations, ed. Jahn, 74-95.
56. Ibid., 83.
57. Ibid., 84.
58. Slaughter, 'Law among Liberal States', 1913.
59. Franceschet, ' "One Powerful and Enlightened Nation" ', 86.
60. Lee Feinstein and Anne-Marie Slaughter, 'A Duty to Prevent', Foreign Affairs 83, no. 1 (2004): 136-51.
61. Kant, 'Perpetual Peace', 96.
62. Ibid., 96.
63. Immanuel Kant, "The Metaphysics of Morals' in Kant: Political Writings, ed. Reiss, 170.
64. MacMillan, 'Immanuel Kant and the Democratic Peace', 55.
65. Kant, 'Perpetual Peace', 124.
66. MacMillan, 'Immanuel Kant and the Democratic Peace', 56.
67. Schwarz, Principles, 42.
68. Jahn, 'Classical Smoke', 185.
69. MacMillan, 'Immanuel Kant', 59.
70. Jahn, 'Classical Smoke', 196.
71. Kant's anthropological expositions are spread out over a number of less well-known and marginalised works during his life, transcending the conventional distinction of his work into a pre-critical and critical period. They can therefore not be dismissed as an expression of a not yet fully developed political theory. Also, the point is not to demonstrate Kant's purported 'racism'. Rather than to reveal such 'prejudices', the critique offered here points to the inherent ontological necessity through which the Other is excluded from the concept of mankind in his project. See Robert Bernasconi, 'Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Racism' in Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, ed. Julie K. Ward and Tommy L. Lott (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 145-66.
72. Michel Foucault, 'What is Enlightenment?' in The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault's Thought, ed. Paul Rabinow (London: Penguin Books, 1984).
73. Bonnie Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1993), 19.
74. Immanuel Kant, 'Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose' in Kant: Political Writings, ed. Reiss, 42.
75. Immanuel Kant, 'Speculative Beginning of Human History', quoted in Honig, Political Theory, 23. This translation is superior to the one found in Kant, 'Conjectures', 221.
76. Tsenay Serequeberhan, 'Eurocentrism in Philosophy: The Case of Immanuel Kant', The Philosophical Forum 27, no. 4 (1996): 333-56.
77. Kant, 'Perpetual Peace', 102-3.
78. Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1960), 110-11.
79. Immanuel Kant, 'Reviews of Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind' in Kant: Political Writings, ed. Reiss, 219.
80. Ibid, 219-20.
81. Kant, 'Idea for a Universal History', 46.
82. Serequeberhan, 'Eurocentrism', 42.
83. Kant, 'Conjectures', 226.
84. Immanuel Kant, 'Physische Geographie', Akademieausgabe von Immanuel Kants Gesammelten Werken. Bände und Verknüpfungen zu den Inhaltsverzeichnissen, 〈www.ikp.uni-bonn.de/kant/aa09/316.html〉 (my translation).
85. Ibid.
86. Kant, Observations, 112.
87. Kant, 'Idea for a Universal History', 52.
88. Inayatullah and Blaney, International Relations, 96-102.
89. Kant, 'Review of Herder's Ideas', 216-17.
90. Ibid, 217.
91. Kant, 'Perpetual Peace', 106.
92. Ibid., 107.
93. Ibid., 106.
94. Kant, 'Idea for a Universal History', 52.
95. Serequeberhan, 'Eurocentrism in Philosophy', 348.
96. Mikkel Thorup, In Defence of Enmity - Critiques of Liberal Globalism. Ph.D Dissertation, (Denmark: University of Aarhus, 2006), 172.
97. Ibid., 24.