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Analysis Of The Book ' Toward Perpetual Peace & Other Writings On Politics, Peace And History

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In the book, “Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on politics, Peace and History”, Immanuel Kant shows us that we can find purpose in a life that seems to lack purpose. By not presupposing individual purposiveness among humans, Kant discovers a natural purpose among “all” humanity. Through this fundamental idea, we can see that Kant discovers a universal history from a Cosmopolitan point of view. Cosmopolitanism centers around the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single community and is based on a mutual universal morality (among rational individuals). This essay will focus mainly on the arguments for purposiveness without purpose, specifically the arguments for purpose and their implications. Furthermore, the question this …show more content…

“In the human being (as the only rational creature on earth), those natural predispositions aimed at the use of its reason are to be developed in full
only in the species, but not in the individual. This can be interpreted in my perspective as genes. Since we are not immortal we must practice and perfect our skills, and by natures will, we pass our perfected genes on to the next generation so they may further perfect the skill in hopes of finding insight or enlightenment. If this is not to be nature’s purpose for us, our natural capacities should be seen as “without direction” and useless. The Third Proposition states,” Nature has willed that human beings produce everything that extends beyond the mechanical organization of their animal existence completely on their own, and that they shall not partake in any happiness or perfection other than that which they attain free of instinct and by means of their own reason ” (Kant, p. 5). Through this premise Kant is saying that nature takes nothing for granted. She is neither wasteful nor reckless with means to her goal. By giving women and men reason and free will, nature entails our purpose. Furthermore, nature did not purpose for us to live guided by instinct, as we lack instinctive knowledge to nurture ourselves and must learn everything ourselves without instruction, which also entails our purpose as reasoning things who must reason to survive and eventually

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