Perpetual Peace

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Cosimo, Inc., 1 янв. 2005 г. - Всего страниц: 72
Between states... no punitive war is thinkable because between them a relation of superior and inferior does not exist. Whence it follows that a war of extermination, where the process of annihilation would strike both parties at once and all right as well, would bring out perpetual peace only in the great graveyard of the human race.-from "Perpetual Peace"One of the most influential thinkers of the Western civilization, a man who profoundly shaped the mind-set of the modern world, examines war and human nature and concludes, bracingly, that global peace is inevitable. Far from an unattainable utopian fantasy, this 1795 essay lays out the requirements for peace, including republican governments, freedom of movement for citizens, and-prophetically-the formation of a league of nations. In this era of imperialistic ambitions and preemptive wars, Kant's insight is a profound reminder that peace is possible but must be actively pursued.Also available from Cosimo Classics: Kant's Analytic of the Beautiful and Perpetual Peace.German metaphysician IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804) served as a librarian of the Royal Library, a prestigious government position, and as a professor at K nigsberg University. His other works include Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764), Critique of Pure Reason (1781), and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).

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A Secret Article for Perpetual
28
Concerning the Harmony of Politics with
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Стр. 29 - ... reliable. Hence states find themselves compelled — not, it is true, exactly from motives of morality — to further the noble end of peace and to avert war, by means of mediation, wherever it threatens to break out, just as if they had made a permanent league for this purpose. For great alliances with a view to war can, from the nature of things, only very rarely occur, and still more seldom succeed. In this way nature guarantees the coming of perpetual peace, through the natural course of...
Стр. 19 - ... claim - a special friendly compact on his behalf would be required to make him for a given time an actual inmate - but he has a right of visitation. This right to present themselves to society belongs to all mankind in virtue of our common right of possession on the surface of the earth on which, as it is a globe, we cannot be infinitely scattered, and must in the end reconcile ourselves to existence side by side : at the same time, originally no one individual had more right than another to...
Стр. 11 - ... they should weigh the matter well, before undertaking such a bad business. For in decreeing war, they would of necessity be resolving to bring down the miseries of war upon their country. This implies: they must fight themselves; they must hand over the costs of the war out of their own property; they must do their poor best to make good the devastation which it leaves behind; and finally, as a crowning ill, they have to accept a burden of debt which will embitter even peace itself, and which...
Стр. 16 - Meanwhile, however, reason, from her throne of the supreme lawgiving moral power, absolutely condemns war as a morally lawful proceeding, and makes a state of peace, on the other hand, an immediate duty. Without a compact between the nations, however, this state of peace cannot be established or assured. Hence there must be...
Стр. 14 - Every state, for the sake of its own security, may — and ought to— demand that its neighbor should submit itself to conditions similar to those of the civil society where the right of every individual is guaranteed. This would give rise to a federation of nations, which, however, would not have to be a State of nations. That would involve a contradiction. For the term "state...
Стр. 15 - ... legal authority; and the glory of the ruler consists in this, that, without his requiring to expose himself to danger, thousands stand at his command ready to let themselves be sacrificed for a matter of no concern to them. The difference between the savages of Europe and those of America lies chiefly in this, that, while many tribes of the latter have been entirely devoured by their enemies, Europeans know a better way of using the vanquished than by eating them; and they prefer to increase...
Стр. 7 - ... on of war which may exceed the treasures of all the other states taken together, and can only be exhausted by a threatening -deficiency in the taxes — an event, however, which will long be kept off by the very briskness of commerce resulting from the reaction of this system on industry and trade. The ease, then, with which war may be waged, coupled with the inclination of rulers towards it — an inclination which seems to be implanted in human nature — is a great obstacle in the way of perpetual...
Стр. 14 - That would involve a contradiction. For the term "state" implies the relation of one who rules to those who obey — that is to say, of lawgiver to the subject people: and many nations in one state would constitute only one nation, which contradicts our hypothesis, since here we have to consider the right of one nation against another, in so far as they are so many separate states and are not to be fused into one. The attachment of savages to their lawless liberty, the fact that they would rather...
Стр. 6 - ... be set. Now, since owing to the sums devoted to this purpose, peace at last becomes even more oppressive than a short war, these standing armies are themselves the cause of wars of aggression, undertaken in order to get rid of this burden. To which we must add that the practice of hiring men to kill or to be killed...

Об авторе (2005)

The greatest of all modern philosophers was born in the Baltic seaport of Konigsberg, East Prussia, the son of a saddler and never left the vicinity of his remote birthplace. Through his family pastor, Immanuel Kant received the opportunity to study at the newly founded Collegium Fredericianum, proceeding to the University of Konigsberg, where he was introduced to Wolffian philosophy and modern natural science by the philosopher Martin Knutzen. From 1746 to 1755, he served as tutor in various households near Konigsberg. Between 1755 and 1770, Kant published treatises on a number of scientific and philosophical subjects, including one in which he originated the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the solar system. Some of Kant's writings in the early 1760s attracted the favorable notice of respected philosophers such as J. H. Lambert and Moses Mendelssohn, but a professorship eluded Kant until he was over 45. In 1781 Kant finally published his great work, the Critique of Pure Reason. The early reviews were hostile and uncomprehending, and Kant's attempt to make his theories more accessible in his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783) was largely unsuccessful. Then, partly through the influence of former student J. G. Herder, whose writings on anthropology and history challenged his Enlightenment convictions, Kant turned his attention to issues in the philosophy of morality and history, writing several short essays on the philosophy of history and sketching his ethical theory in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). Kant's new philosophical approach began to receive attention in 1786 through a series of articles in a widely circulated Gottingen journal by the Jena philosopher K. L. Reinhold. The following year Kant published a new, extensively revised edition of the Critique, following it up with the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), treating the foundations of moral philosophy, and the Critique of Judgment (1790), an examination of aesthetics rounding out his system through a strikingly original treatment of two topics that were widely perceived as high on the philosophical agenda at the time - the philosophical meaning of the taste for beauty and the use of teleology in natural science. From the early 1790s onward, Kant was regarded by the coming generation of philosophers as having overthrown all previous systems and as having opened up a whole new philosophical vista. During the last decade of his philosophical activity, Kant devoted most of his attention to applications of moral philosophy. His two chief works in the 1790s were Religion Within the Bounds of Plain Reason (1793--94) and Metaphysics of Morals (1798), the first part of which contained Kant's theory of right, law, and the political state. At the age of 74, most philosophers who are still active are engaged in consolidating and defending views they have already worked out. Kant, however, had perceived an important gap in his system and had begun rethinking its foundations. These attempts went on for four more years until the ravages of old age finally destroyed Kant's capacity for further intellectual work. The result was a lengthy but disorganized manuscript that was first published in 1920 under the title Opus Postumum. It displays the impact of some of the more radical young thinkers Kant's philosophy itself had inspired. Kant's philosophy focuses attention on the active role of human reason in the process of knowing the world and on its autonomy in giving moral law. Kant saw the development of reason as a collective possession of the human species, a product of nature working through human history. For him the process of free communication between independent minds is the very life of reason, the vocation of which is to remake politics, religion, science, art, and morality as the completion of a destiny whose shape it is our collective task to frame for ourselves.

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