Immanuel Kant's Uninable Peace

‘War. War never changes.’ The tagline from the popular video game series, Fallout, suggesting that although the weapons used and how wars are fought my change, conflict in human nature never changes. Is war an inevitable part of global politics? According to Immanuel Kant the answer is no. Kant would have us believe that a perpetual peace is possible. In this essay I will discuss whether war is an inevitable part of global politics, and whether or not perpetual peace is possible, with reference to the work of Immanuel Kant. The body of my essay will consist of four main sections. What is meant by war and peace, in the global political perspective, Immanuel Kant’s position on the questions, and other theories and ideologies that would seek to

Throughout the history of mankind there has come to be two factors that are seen as inevitable. The first is progress, humans are naturally competitive creatures who not only want to insure their own safety but also get one up on their neighbours. Progress has led to huge leaps forward, not only technologically but also socially. However, aside from progress there is another factor, war. Time and time again throughout history humans have fought and killed each other for their own selfish reasons and security. And according to political theorists such as Hobbes this is simply the state of nature, a perpetual state of ‘war of all against all’, further surmising that it is due to this that mankind is fundamentally selfish. However, just because so far, mankind’s history has consisted of an endless cycle of wars, does that mean that it must continue to be this way? Political Philosopher Immanuel Kant outlines a number of articles that he hypothesises could lead towards a perpetual peace. There are many criticisms of Kant’s perpetual peace, many argue that it is to idealistic and utopian. However, Kant doesn’t deny these claims. Instead Kant argues that if this ‘perpetual peace’ is even a remote possibility then for the good of mankind, we have a duty to try make it a reality.

The democratic peace theory was not always seen as the substantial argument and significant contribution to the field of International Relations that it is today. Prior to the 1970’s, it was realist and non-realist thought that took preeminence in political theoretical thinking. Though the democratic peace theory was first criticized for being inaccurate in its claim that democracy promotes peace and as such democracies do not conflict with each other, trends, statistical data, reports have suggested and proved that the democratic peace theory is in fact valid in its claim. (Ray, 1998, pp. 27) Over the years having been refined, developed and amended, it is now most significant in explaining modern politics and it is easy to accept that

Liberals believe the causes of war are miscommunication, mistrust, and misperceptions. As a solution, Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, believed that to overcome international anarchy and achieve perpetual peace, there needed to be collective action (interdependency between states), and a federation of states in which state sovereignty will be left intact (international organizations). However, for this to occur, states must have a democratic government. This later became known as the Kantian Triangle.

The Democratic peace thesis, whose basic concepts were studied by Kant in the 1700s, is the theory that suggests that democracies have been pacific in their relations with one other and are unlikely to go to war with another democracy. “Democracies rarely fight each other (an empirical statement) because (b) they have other means of resolving conflicts between them and therefore do not need to fight each other (a prudential statement),and (c) they perceive that democracies should not fight each other (a normative statement about principles of right behavior), which reinforces the empirical state¬ment. By this reasoning the more democracies there are in the world, the fewer potential adversaries we and other democracies will have and the wider the zone of peace.” russet

Immanuel Kant was a famous philosopher whose philosophical influences impacted almost every new philosophical idea, theory, concept etc. In a sense, he was considered the central face of contemporary philosophy. Kant spent his whole life in Russia. Starting out as a tutor, to then a professor, he lectured about everything; from geography to obviously philosophy. In his early life, he was raised to emphasize faith and religious feelings over reason and theological principles. As he got older though, that position changed. It then became that knowledge is necessarily confided and within the bounds of reason. Now with this in mind, Kant claims many different things that derive from this. There are many different parts and aspects to it which is why it relates to almost every philosophical idea out there. Kant referred his epistemology as “critical philosophy” since all he wanted to do was critique reason and sort our legitimate claims of reasons from illegitimate ones. His epistemology says that we can have an objective, universal, and necessary knowledge of the world, and that science cannot tell us about reality. He claims science cannot tell us anything because it only tells us about the world as it is perceived, whether it’s based on measures, manipulations, experiments and so on. Kant says that we all have knowledge; that the mind and experience work together and that we construct and gain this knowledge by both reason and experience.

During the interwar era, politicians and governments around the world had self-perceptions of policies, views, and values that would have shaped their states and international interactions. With these politics self-perceptions, it showed to have great instabilities in failing and having issues from their policies and provisions. As with the ‘League of Nations’ international organization formed after world war one. Established a peace-making conference that resulted in

Before Kant wrote this book, he observed fallacies in society such as thinking about the consequences of an action, rather than if the action itself is good. Other fallacies include that humans do not typically think about how a decision will impact their fellow humans. Kant noted these deficiencies in society and as a result hypothesized the universal categorical imperative stating one “ought never to act in such a way that [one] couldn’t also will that maxim on which [one] should be a universal law” (Kant 11). Kant offered this categorical imperative to answer most questions of morality simply by asking oneself, “Would I be content for my maxim…to hold as a universal law, for myself as well as for others” (Kant 12). The reason Kant’s universal imperative is foremost to other ethical theories is because if we were to conceptualize our decision on a grand scale using Kant’s universal imperative, we would un-biasedly conclude that either our decision would deteriorate society or that our decision would be of benefit to society. For example, in reference to the act of lying, Kant explains that a person “could will the lie but not a universal law to life; for such a law would result in there being no promises at all” (Kant 12). Similarly, if I promised a person to vouch for them and tell the truth at a court hearing and instead I recall the situation inaccurately for my own gain or for certain benefits, I am contributing to the injustice of the World. In contrast, if I were to get on the stand and ask myself “what would happen if no one got on the witness stand and told the accurate story,” I would have substantiated that a World with no truth is a World filled with criminals who do not receive justice. Kant’s universal categorical imperative is applicable to the vast majority of moral questions, making it the

Prompt: Kant argues that in Groundwork, it is morally wrong to not develop talents: What is his argument and is he correct?

“Sapere aude!” is the rallying call for Kant’s enlightenment. Translated, it roughly means dare to be wise. Plato, through the voice of Socrates in the dialogues The Euthyphro and The Crito, demonstrates the ultimate example of Kant’s definition of enlightenment. Socrates fearlessly dares to be wise.

The exercise of one’s reason is what Immanuel Kant promotes in What is Enlightenment (1997) by creating two main environments: the public and the private space. The public sphere is a place to exercise the public reason where individuals are free from obligation of their occupations or vocations. Specifically, individuals are free to write or speak critically, and act freely without any restrictions. Principally, in the public space, individuals have no conditions or hierarchies who tell them to you act in a certain way, so everyone can perform independently. Nevertheless, the public sphere is not the way you act in public; it just

Immanuel Kant I can understand his saying do what you can the same time let it be a universal law. So therefore whatever you do let it make sense and be fair that everyone could do and most likely be legal. Like helping people homeless people for instance I think if everyone offers a homeless person a hand with clothes and food that would be fair. Like you wouldn’t have to go out your way to help them you could give them a shirt that you no longer want, or of food item anything inside your cabin, a roll of toilet paper and that wouldn’t be too much on your end unless its your last. However, if everyone would do that would could it would help a person in need many of us waste money on a daily basis on things we really don’t need. It would be

Lying the one form of communication that is the untruth expressed to be the truth. Immanuel Kant states that lying is morally wrong in all possible ways. His hatred for lying has made him “just assumed that anyone who lied would be operating with a maxim like this: tell a lie so as to gain some benefit.”(Landau,pp.171) This is true for a vast number of people, they will lie in order to gain a certain benefit from the lie rather than the truth.It is similar to if you play a game of truth or dare, some rather pick a dare because it would release them from having to tell the truth. However, those who do pick truth still have a chance to lie to cover up the absolute truth.People lie in order to cover who they truly are. Even if you lie to benefit someone or something else, it would not matter to Kant because he does not care for the consequences. If you lie but have a good intention it is not the same for Kant, he would argue that you still lied no matter the consequence that a lie is a lie. “ While lying, we accuse others for not being transparent. While being hypocrites ourselves, we expect others to be sincere.” (Dehghani,Ethics) We know how it feels to be lied to by a person, so in order to not have the feeling returned, we hope the person will be truthful. We rather be surrounded by truthful people constantly despite all the lies that some people tell. No

The EU represents Kant’s idea of a federation of states in perpetual of peace in many of the more overarching ways, it must be noted that it is not a perfect fit. Before diving into the support of this claim, it is important to realize what the European Union is so to fully understand what it could represent. The EU is a political and economic union, hoping to facilitate free movement in terms of trading, with the intent of building peaceful relationships and increasing economic growth. Perhaps the biggest reason the EU was created was to increase peace throughout Europe and hopefully take away the possibility of another World War. The European Unions serves as a facilitator for agreement between each nation inside the union, and provides the

Charles Tilly’s article “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime” creates an analogy between the creation of European states and acting out an organized crime. Earlier in our course, we learned about Max Weber, who defined a state as “a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Tilly argues that the word “protection” in relation to physical force has positive and negative connotations, leading to illegitimate use of power during the period time that Tilly is discussing. Tilly’s analysis eventually tells the reader that war is always a major part of state politics; specifically that war making and state making are interdependent.