Kant and Walzer on Peace and War

According to Kant, the principles of a nation that can participate in a federation of free states begin with the republican, or representative, form of government (Kant 113-114). Reason must be a dominant principle, and reason "absolutely condemns war as a means of determining the right and makes seeking the state of peace a matter of unmitigated duty" (116). This leaves out the option of wars of conquest. Further, the free states, i.e., republics, that would become federated would not seek power but would be interested only in "the maintenance and security of each nation's own freedom" (117).

Kant envisages a federation of free states as a federation of independent republics that form an international version of a social compact. It is to be grounded in reason. All of the states are to "accommodat[e] themselves to the constraints of common law [and] establish a nation of peoples (civitas gentium) that (continually growing) will finally include all the people of the earth" (117). This is not a world government (republic) but an international "federation that prevents war and curbs the tendency of that hostile inclination to defy the law" (117-18).

Kant's view of how to guarantee the striving for perpetual peace starts with the idea that conflict between nations is organized "in such a way that they must compel one another to submit to coercive laws and thus to enter into a state of peace" 124). Even a state that might secretly want to invade another refrains from doing so b

Related Essays

History of the Peloponnesian .... Walzer describes aggression, specifically the violation of territorial .... Kant's view of such assertions is that they .... makes seeking the state of peace a matter of .... (1719 7 )

Conscription as a Concept of Social Justice .... as represented by Locke, Rousseau, and Kant" (Rawls, 1971 .... form an army of defense, either in peace or in .... Walzer cites the fact that during the American Civil .... .... (10644 43 )

Category: Philosophy - K