Peace

Toward Perpetual Peace
Immanuel Kant was the paradigmatic and culminating philosopher of the European Enlightenment. He was the paradigmatic philosopher of the Enlightenment in his belief that human freedom of choice and action exercised in accordance with pure reason is itself our most fundamental value, indeed, as he says in his Lectures on Ethics, the "inner value of the world." But he is also the culminating philosopher of the Enlightenment in his recognition that true freedom of the will implies the possibility of choosing to do evil as well as to do good, and that although we must be able to look at nature as an arena compatible with and even tending toward the realization of the objectives of human morality, no laws of nature or dialectic of history alone can ever guarantee the realization of morality. Only the free choice of human beings to do good rather than evil can ever make the ideals of morality real. These convictions are evident in Kant's famous essay of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) 1795, Toward Perpetual Peace. Although Kant's systematic statement of political philosophy, the "Metaphysical Principles of Right" in his Metaphysics of Morals (1797), would not be published until two years after Toward Perpetual Peace, the earlier essay provides the keystone to Kant's political philosophy and makes plain Kant's conviction that the laws of nature and history, including even prudential reasoning on the part of human beings, can bring about the necessary conditions of worldwide justice, but only the free choice of human beings in a position to influence national and international affairs—"moral politicians," Kant calls them—can add the sufficient condition for the realization of such justice, which is a fundamental demand of morality. . . . As stated at the outset, Kant sees the preservation and promotion of our own freedom as our most fundamental moral obligation. In the first instance, this is the freedom to set our own ends, or choose our own paths of...