War and Peace

Turgot

• Self-interest, ambition and excessive pride change the scene of the world and enlighten the hum mind, which draws separate nations towards each other and connect policy and commerce across the globe

Smith 

• There are four stages of mankind: the age of hunters; the age of shepherds; the age of agriculture; the age of commerce 
• Commerce among nations, as among individuals, is a bond of union and friendship

Condorcet 

• Humankind is perceptible, therefore it should devote itself to achieving peace, liberty and equality 
• The Enlightenment suggests a grand revolution towards knowledge that assures us that it will be a happy revolution 

Rousseau 

• Argues that artistic and scientific progress in the modern world has been accompanied by the absolute corruption of morals
• Argues that the supposed modern achievement of recognition of natural equality and establishment of the rule of law is, in fact, the legalization of inequality and the legitimization of the oppression of the poor by the rich
• However, he was not naively nostalgic for a lost world of innocence 
• He argues that natural liberty transforms into civil liberty, which at the same time is the possibility of the acquisition of moral liberty, which is thus giving law to oneself 

Kant

• Argues that a society of free moral agents would be a ‘kingdom of ends’, i.e., a community in which everyone is treated, and treats themselves, not merely instrumentally, but as beings with ‘dignity’, who have value in themselves
• Autonomy is the basis of the dignity of human nature 
• The proper direction of the human race lies in further enlightenment and progress
• Progress will be in autonomy in politics and law as well as in morality 
• The authority of a king rests on his uniting the general public will in his own 
• We do not live in an enlightened age, but we live in an age of enlightenment 
• Believed that it was in the political sphere, as an autonomous citizen of an autonomous state, that man's intellectual and moral capacities would be most fully realised 
• Aware of the implications of international relations for every state's internal affairs. In Europes, states devoted their energies to military competition with each other, not the enlightenment of their citizens
• War is the chief obstacle in the way of progress because of the chaotic abyss of political relations 
• True moral influence cannot be expected so long as states direct all their energy to force as this slows motions and slows progress 

Kant 

• Argued that a treaty and a balance of power was not the way permanent peace could be achieved because the treaty was merely a true: the right to resume hostilities was reserved in case the other side violated the terms of the treaty
• What is needed is that states find a reason to give up the right to wage war 
• Inspired by the French Revolution which argues that the political vision of the Declaration could be exported and universalised, therefore there would be a single 'world state', in which all of humanity would be unified into a single people with a single government. This would be the end of war between different nations because there would no longer be different nations 

Cloots

• Argued that the French Revolution transformed what was imaginable in politics domestically and internationally 
• From now on human beings would no longer be corrupted by society and government as rivalries between governing classes had been left behind 
• War between national governments would be ended by getting rid of national governments by the new revolutionary French army destroying the governing classes of foreign powers which would allow the unification of people across Europe
• He spoke of a 'world state', but the powers claimed by such state would be minimal 

Cloots 

• He did not imagine that historical/cultural differences between people would disappear altogether 
• Crucially, he argued that people would not need to be governed as they had been before 
• He imagined the end of politics as it had always been conducted in European history 
• He was a kind of anarchist

Kant's reply 

• He could not see what the difference was between Cloots’s vision and the ‘soulless despotism’ of the old idea of universal monarchy
• He rejected the optimistic theory of human nature on which Cloots built his vision of a minimal world state
• He had no sympathy with anarchism because there was no way in which individual virtue could be a replacement for politics 
• Life in society was essentially a matter of 'unsocial sociability' 

Kant 

• Rejects the idea of a world state, in favour of a global federation of states, whose relations would be determined by a principle of ‘cosmopolitan right’
• There would need to be a treaty between all nations: but a treaty different in kind from a truce: a binding agreement, analogous to (but different from) the agreement made by individuals when they contract into society
• Appears to envisage a peaceful international order in terms of ‘visionary idea’ of a system of global governance 
• Natural capacities are destined to develop 
  • Everything in nature is directed towards an end and nature does nothing in vain
• The development of rational capacities takes a long time
  • Reason reaches beyond instinct and knows no boundaries, but it needs attempts, practice and instruction 
  • Individuals do not live long enough, hence the full development of rational predisposition much have an intergenerational nature 
• The human species has worth because they have gone beyond what animal existence wills human beings to produce for their own happiness 
  • Instinct along is a better guide to reason as nature provides human beings with reason/freedom 
  • Reason/freedom must have a function other than achieving happiness 

Kant

• • Nature is more concerned with human beings "self-esteem" for achieving their own goals by their own work, rather than with their "well-being"
• Unsociable sociability is the propensity to enter into society combined with a thoroughgoing resistance that threats to break it 
  • Humans have inclinations so socialise but also to isolate 
  • Nature thus forces us to progress against our will 
• There is a need for a society where antagonism can be exercised to the fullest compatibly with everyone's freedom 
  • Only in such perfect civil constitution can our rational predispositions be fully realised 
• Justice is the hardest problem 
  • The human being in society needs a master, but this will always be another human being, who in turn needs a master, thus there is a tendency to abuse power because who will guard the guards?
• Perfect justice can only be solved through a lawful external relation between states 
  • War will eventually compel nations to form a federation and enter a cosmopolitan condition of public state security 
  • The devastation of war proves there is no progress in prioritising military over the cultivation of human beings' thought and reasoning 

Kant 

• There is still so much to be done to reach a state of peace 
  • The problem may be solved my chance; there is a gradual plan of nature or the problem may never be solved 
  • Humanity is in an intermediate stage of progress 
• No state can hinder enlightenment without losing rank; civil freedom cannot be infringed without disadvantages 
• Enlightenment must ascent bit by bit up to the thrones and have its influence on their principles of government 
• Kant's project allows us to find a thread in past history which justifies hope 
• History is a regular course of improvement of state constitutions 
• Western principles will spread across the world and this brings hope
• Imagines that 'nature' will end war by bringing peace into existence 
• Proposes a system of world government, with the power to enforce law, but it does not involve the dissolution of individual nation-states 
• The French Revolution confirmed Kant’s sense that the only legitimate government is the republic, in which autonomous moral agents achieve ‘external’ liberty under laws they give themselves 
• Believed that war had been caused by the corrupt and despotic political systems of the ancient regime and thus Kant argued for an international order of republics which would bring an order of peace

Kant

• Argues for an entirely new kind of international order which will end war forever and make peace perpetual 
• No treaty of peace shall be held to such if it is made with a secret reservation of material for future war
• No independently existing state shall be acquired by another state through inheritance, exchange, purchase or donation 
• Standing armies shall in time be abolished altogether 
• No national debt shall be contracted with regard to the external affairs of a state
• No state shall forcibly interfere in the constitution and government of another state
• No state at war with another shall allow itself such acts of hostility as would make trust impossible during a future peace 
• There is no deep tension between theory and practice in political philosophy, therefore how might this transformation take place
  • A condition of peace must be established as the state of nature 
  • There needs to be a law that governs relations between states to create a condition of peace 
• First article for perpetual peace
  • The civil constitution in every state shall be republican; a republic is any form of government which is not a despotism 

Kant 

• • In a republic, the government has its basis in the consent of citizens, therefore a rational government would not consent to wars that they would have to fight in and pay for 
• Second definitive article 
  • The right of nations shall be based on a federalism of free states 
  • There would be a league of nations which need not be a state of nations 
  • This would join nations together under a system of international law and each state would Thus have rights defined by law and wars of aggression would violate those rights 
  • But there would be no supra-national state with authority and power to enforce international law 
• Third definitive article 
  • Cosmopolitan right shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality 
  • Cosmopolitan right defines the rights and duties of states to foreigners 
  • Peace depends not only on the institution of law to regulate relations between states but also on law to regulate relations between individuals (and groups) and (foreign) states
• Argues that states have no right to subordinate themselves (and their citizens) to such a supra-national authority
• States are different from individuals in the state of nature because ‘they already have a rightful constitution internally’, therefore the citizens of individual states already have rights guaranteed to them by the constitutions of their states

Kant 

• The fact that individual states have their own constitutions need not mean that it is impossible for a supra-national state to be created, it just means that it would have to be created by the sovereign wills of all the world’s peoples, rather than being imposed on peoples by their governments
• If citizens came to understand themselves as world citizens as well as citizens of their own countries then a world state could enforce international laws
• Shows that our choice is not between a war (or, the threat of war) and an expansion of despotism: the world as it is is seen in a new way
• Shows us that we have a means to criticize the world as it is, on the basis that things could be different