Kant And The Law Of Peace

Publisher Description

Kant and the Law of Peace is a critical examination of the jurisprudential aspects of Kant's international thought, with reference to the argument of his treatise Perpetual Peace (1795). Kant's international thought is situated in the wider context of his moral and political philosophy. Particular attention is given to explaining how Kant saw law as providing the basis for peace among men and states in the international sphere, and how, in his exposition of the elements of the law of peace, he broke with the secular natural law tradition of Grotius, Hobbes, Wolff and Vattel.

In Kant and the Law of Peace, Charles Covell examines the jurisprudential aspects of Kant's international thought, with particular reference to the argument of his treatise Perpetual Peace (1795). The book begins with a general outline of Kant's moral and political philosophy. In the discussion of Perpetual Peace that follows, it is explained how Kant saw law as providing the basis for peace among men and states in the international sphere, and how, in his exposition of the elements of the law of peace, he broke with the secular natural law tradition of Grotius, Hobbes, Wolff and Vattel in the view he took of the foundations of the law that was to make for peace in the international sphere. In the conclusion to the book, Kant and his law of peace are considered in relation to the condition of contemporary international society. Here, it is suggested that while Kant stands in the liberal tradition in international thought and practice, the tradition of liberalism he represents is rather more at odds with current trends in present international society than is sometimes supposed.

The past two decades have seen renewed scholarly and popular interest in the law and morality of war. Positions that originated in the late Middle Ages through the seventeenth century have received more sophisticated philosophical elaboration. Although many contemporary writers appeal to ideas drawn from Kant's moral philosophy, his explicit discussions of war have not yet been brought into their proper place in these debates. Ripstein argues that a special morality governs war because of its distinctive immorality: the wrongfulness of entering or remaining in a condition in which force decides everything provides the standards for evaluating the grounds of initiating war, the ways in which wars are fought, and the results of past wars. The book is a major intervention into just war theory from the most influential contemporary interpreter and exponent of Kant's political and legal theories. Beginning from the difference between governing human affairs through words and through force, Ripstein articulates a Kantian account of the state as a public legal order in which all uses of force are brought under law. Against this background, he provides innovative accounts of the right of national defence, the importance of conducting war in ways that preserve the possibility of a future peace, and the distinctive role of international institutions in bringing force under law.

A new 2024 translation of Immanuel Kant's short but famous essay "Towards Eternal Peace" (sometimes translated "On Eternal Peace"), from the original German manuscript first published in 1793. This new edition contains an afterword by the translator, a timeline of Kant's life and works, and a helpful index of Kant's key concepts and intellectual rivals. This translation is designed for readability, rendering Kant's enigmatic German into the simplest equivalent possible, and removing the academic footnotes to make this critically important historical text as accessible as possible to the modern reader. Kant’s 1795 Towards Eternal Peace: A Philosophical Draft is one of his most well-known works written in his old age. Here Kant directly applies his Teleological Moral Philosophy he established across his life directly to the field of politics and International Relations. Due to the broken and inherited evil nature of man, peace is not natural and must be built through adherence to rational maxims at the individual, national and international levels. These binding international maxims have built the foundation of anti-Machiavellian Liberal Internationalism of today. On Perpetual Peace is one of the foundational philosophic works underlying the international world order and the charter of the United Nations. The League of Nations ( a phrase coined by Kant) was founded by Woodrow Wilson, who was a professor of Kantian philosophy, and explicitly used Kant's terminology "league of nations". This work was designed to be a template for future agreements between states, hence the reason it is written like a legal contract.