1. Kant and Hegel
26 September 2008

2. Perpetual Peace: Definitive Articles
“The Civil Constitution of Every State Should Be Republican” (principle of civil right)
“The Law of Nations Shall be Founded on a Federation of Free States” (principle of international right)
“The Law of World Citizenship Shall Be Limited to Conditions of Universal Hospitality” (principle of cosmopolitan right)

3. How is a republican constitution possible?
“The problem of organizing a state, however hard it may seem, can be solved even for a race of devils, if only they are intelligent.”

4. Republican constitutions
Even if human nature is “depraved” we can create constitutions that have a peaceful tendency, because evil inclinations tend to cancel each other out

5. A federation of free states
What is a federation of free states?
Why would it promote peace?
How is it possible?

6. What is a federation of free states?
It is not a world state or a superstate
It is concerned only with regulating international disputes among its members

7. Why not a world state?
Peace in a world state would be accomplished at the cost of freedom
Nature separates us through language and culture
If we escape the state of nature (which in Kant is a state of war) through a state, ought we not to take the next step and form a world state?
The reasons that Kant gives are less moral than practical

8. Why is this peaceful?
It is a federation of free states, i.e., republican states
Such states would be tied together by relations which make war much more costly

9. How is it possible?
A powerful free people may serve as the nucleus of a federation, which might then grow
Or several regional federations might grow over time

10. Cosmopolitan Right as the Right of Hospitality
What is it?
Why does it lead to peace?
How is it possible?

11. What is the right of hospitality?
The right to visit and trade (not necessarily to live)
Remember Vitoria

12. How does this lead to peace?
Trade is ultimately incompatible with war
It counteracts our natural “separating” tendencies (via language, culture, etc.) and creates mutual understanding
Kant argues against “conquest” in the name of trade
Kant’s essay is itself a marvel of cosmopolitan enlightenment – full of sympathetic references to places and people that he never visited

13. How is it possible?
The “spirit of trade” sooner or later dominates every people
This is not a “moral” motive, but it can be come the basis of peace anyway

14. The guarantee of perpetual peace
What do we have to assume about nature, and in particular about human nature, to think that perpetual peace is not hopeless?

15. The guarantee of perpetual peace
Nature itself wills peace through war:
People can live everywhere
People live everywhere because of war
Yet because of war and the finitude of the globe we have learned and can learn (we have been compelled to learn or will be compelled to learn) to establish legal relations in all three important respects (civil, international, and cosmopolitan right)

16. The guarantee of perpetual peace
Civil right
Discord (internal) or war (external) forces men to establish constitutions where their evil inclinations cancel each other out
The fact that the globe is fully occupied guarantees that each people must form itself as a state to defend itself

17. The guarantee of perpetual peace
International right
Each people wants to work towards peace, dominated by itself
But each people is divided from the others by language and religion, which prevents a world state
War itself can be a learning mechanism in the process of forming federations
Consider the history of the EU

18. The guarantee of perpetual peace
Cosmopolitan right
The “spirit of trade” counteracts the separating tendencies of nature, though it is not a moral impulse

19. The guarantee of perpetual peace
The idea is that we can believe that nature will do this for us even if we do not follow our duties
Yet the guarantee is only a “moral hypothesis”, not a theoretical certainty: we can’t really predict the future, and we are not theoretically entitled to find “purpose” in history

20. The secret article
"The opinions of philosophers on the conditions of the possibility of public peace shall be consulted by those states armed for war."
it is a “secret article” not because it is literally secret, but because Kant is suggesting that for sovereigns to acknowledge this publicly would amount to a loss of face. Perhaps no longer applicable today? (A joke by Kant)

21. The Maxim of Publicity
All maxims that we adopt to guide our political conduct must be capable of being made public.
What does this imply for the possibility of establishing republican constitutions?
But is morality compatible with politics?

22. Implications
We must work through reform; revolution is not right or just in any circumstances
Promises are to be kept even when they adversely affect the welfare of the state
Preemptive attacks are not right or just

23. Hegel
History as the unfolding of “spirit” (Geist) in human cultural forms
Philosophy as the retrospective description of the rationality of this unfolding

24. The forms of community The family: the realm of unconditional love
Civil society: the realm of self-interested individual interactions
The state: the ethical realm

25. The Family
Human beings are members of families unconditionally; membership does not depend on free activity
Individuality requires the possibility of negation
Hence the family cannot provide a context of recognition necessary for a person to become a free individual

26. Civil Society
In civil society, human beings appear as possessors of individual rights
Makes possible individuality through the mutual recognition that conflict and opposition bring; membership depends on free activity, and can be negated
Leads to “social contract” theories of the political community

27. The State
Embodies the shared values of a people in a rational form (law)
Conceives of human beings as parts of a larger whole, lifting them beyond their self-interest and giving content to “empty” universal rules of morality
Related to, but not identical with, the volk or nation as a cultural entity

28. The state as an ethical community
Composed of classes with a specific purpose
The monarch: represents the “unity” and “individuality” of the state
The military: sacrifices itself for the state
The civil servants: embody the “universality” of the values of the state in their concern for the rule of law
The bourgeoisie

29. Hegel: the nation-state
The self-conscious form of the “spirit” as a purposely cultivated cultural life in political form
Hegel makes no assumption that there must be one state per nation, however
Each nation-state a distinct manifestation of spirit and so a form of right: each state is sovereign with respect to every other
Like individuals, it requires recognition by other states in order to attain this self-consciousness
Recognition demands plurality and conflict

30. Hegel’s Critique of Kant
A federation of states distinct from a world superstate depends always on the contingent agreement of states, who as sovereign individuals can always determine that they have a right not to agree
Individuality implies the possibility of negation

31. Hegel’s critique of Kant
War is not entirely bad: there is a rational purpose to war in history that is not purely instrumental (e.g., as the means to universal peace)

32. War and the state
War results from the concern of each state for its own welfare and recognition
War enhances shared values – the unity of the state
Lifts people out of their concern with material possessions characteristic of civil society: promotes civic virtue (as “selflessness”)
Enhances the unity of the state which is likely to fragment by prolonged peace
War not an occasion for individual heroism

33. Limits on war
War should be limited by the fact of mutual recognition: it ought to come to an end in a way that preserves the possibility of peace
Hostility in modern war should be abstract, not individualized
War is a conflict between states, and hence militaries as the class of people who have the function of warmaking in the state and embody its courage
Yet war can always devolve into a war of survival; this is necessary for war to serve its function

34. Limits on war
The treatment of soldiers, etc. depends merely on customs, but these customs embody valid conceptions of right in a historical time period
In modern times war is limited in the European context through common customs, etc.

35. Limits on war
War is not to be justified with reference to its general salutary effects in any particular case
The justification of any particular war will always have to do with the specific “welfare” of a state, but not with the abstract preservation of a state’s unity

36. Some problems
Hegel predicts that modern warfare will be more “rational” because more abstract and less individualized
The “individuality” or “sovereignty” of the state is in tension with the idea that war must, and can, be limited
The idea of a historical unfolding of the spirit leading to the ethical state seems to lead to perpetual peace anyway (“The End of History”)