Work · German Idealism & Its Heirs
Perpetual Peace
Republics, a league of nations, cosmopolitan right.
Introduction
Kant wrote the essay in 1795, the year of the Peace of Basel between Prussia and France, and gave it the form of a peace treaty. Six preliminary articles set conditions such as no peace treaty with secret reservations, the gradual abolition of standing armies and no forcible interference in the constitution of another state. Three definitive articles require a republican constitution in every state, a federation of free states and a cosmopolitan right limited to hospitality. In a supplementary “secret article” Kant asks states to consult philosophers. The ironic title, he says at the start, comes from a Dutch innkeeper’s sign showing a graveyard. Theorists of the “democratic peace” refer to the essay.
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Connections
Builds on
- The Social Contract1762 · Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Taken up in
- The Rights of Others2004 · Seyla Benhabib
- Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers2006 · Kwame Anthony Appiah
More works by Immanuel Kant
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