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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]WAR AND PERPETUAL PEACE:
HEGEL, KANT AND CONTEMPORARY WARS
MARIA DE LOURDES ALVES BORGES
Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil)
Abstract
The paper compares the views of two classical authors about the possibility of peace and the
inevitability of war: Kant and Hegel. The paper will argue that the main lines of these two schools are
still alive today in our contemporary international politics. The Kantian school, with the possibility
of peace, based on a league of nations, has inspired the creation of the United Nations. The Hegelian
way of thinking (there is no judge above the national states, besides the history of the world) has
proven to be as contemporary as ever, once one analyzes some recent events of the international
politics. Both Kantian and Hegelian views have weak and strong points, and it is a difficult task to
reconcile both of them in a reasonable international politics. At the end, the paper will present John
Rawls´ doctrine of international politics, as stated in
The Laws of Peoples
, arguing that this doctrine
follows the Kantian tradition of a
foedus pacificum
, while giving room to some Hegelian philosophical
conceptions.
Key words
: Kant, Hegel, War, Peace
Proposal:
In this paper, I would like to compare two different views about the possibility of
peace and the inevitability of war. I shall compare the views of two classical authors of the history of
philosophy, Kant and Hegel. According to the former, we should strive to construct a league of nations,
which would mediate the conflicts among the states and promote a stable international peace, a
foedus
pacificum
(Kant,
Toward Perpetual Peace
, PP, 1795)
1
. According to the latter, this conception is a
naïve one, since the power of nations is the only possible international judge (Hegel,
Philosophy of
Right
, PR, 1821). The deals among nations are only contingent ones and can be broken depending on
the will of the powerful nations. There will be no judge above the national states, besides the history of
the world (
Weltgeschichte
), and world history becomes manifest in the most accomplished state of a
particular era, whose institutions express the highest stage of the embodiment of freedom.
I shall argue that the main lines of these two schools are still alive today in our contemporary
international politics. The Kantian school, with the possibility of peace, based on a league of nations,
has inspired the creation of the United Nations which is still a vibrant institution for people who believe
in an international league for peace. Indeed, those who believe in a United Nations go further than Kant
had anticipated, thinking of the UN as an international organism, which can also judge and punish a
state for a transgression of international treatises concerning peace, and can even use force against it.
The Hegelian way of thinking has proven to be as contemporary as ever, once one analyzes some
recent events of the international politics. The idea that the nation whose institutions express a higher
degree of freedom has the right to be the ultimate judge of the world is expressed in many official
speeches given by the American president. The war is then presented not as a fight between two
ethic@,
Florianópolis, v.5, n. 1, p. 81-90, Jun 2006.
82
BORGES, M. L.
War and Perpetual Peace
particular states, but as a battle between two conceptions of freedom and human rights, a battle between
the free world and the world of darkness.
I shall maintain that both Kantian and Hegelian views have weak and strong points, and that it
is a difficult task to reconcile both of them in a reasonable international politics.
At the end, I shall present John Rawls´ doctrine of international politics, as stated in
The Laws of
Peoples
(LP), 1999
.
I argue that this doctrine follows the Kantian tradition of a
foedus pacificum.
Ye t
it gives room to some Hegelian philosophical conceptions, mostly in the difference Rawls establishes
among well-ordered and out-law states. I focus on the principles regarding a just war doctrine (LP, §
14), particularly the right of well-ordered societies to wage war against non well-ordered states whose
expansionist aims threaten the security and free institutions of well-ordered regimes.
1.T
OWARD
P
ERPETUAL
P
EACE
Kant argues for a stable peace among states. In order to achieve this goal, he suggests that states
join together in order to constitute a league of nations.
Nations, as states, can be appraised as individuals, who in their natural condition (that
is, in their independence from external laws) already wrong one another by being near
one another; and each of them, for the sake of its security, can and ought to require the
others to enter with it into a constitution similar to a civil constitution, in which each
can be assured of its right (PP, 8: 354).
Kant claims here that states necessarily wrong one another in a condition of independence from external
laws. For that reason, in order to promote their own safety, they should leave their state of nature and
enter a constitution similar to a civil constitution. This civil constitution among states has a similarity to
the civil society. Just like individuals prefer to leave their state of nature in order to establish a civil
society, particular states choose to enter into a civil constitution to guarantee their rights and avoid the
permanent threat of war
2
. However, this league should not be a state above other states:
This would be a league of nations, which, however, need not be a state of nations.
That would be a contradiction, inasmuch as every state involves the relation of a
superior (legislating) to an inferior (obeying, namely the people); but a number of
nations within one state would constitute only one nation, and this contradicts the
presupposition (since here we have to consider the right of nations in relation to one
another insofar as they comprise different states and are not to be fused into a single
state). ( PP, 8:354)
ethic@,
Florianópolis, v.5, n.1, p. 81-90, Jun 2006.
BORGES, M.
L.
War and Perpetual Peace
83
Although it is not a state above a state, in a league of nations,
the states leave their barbarous
state of nature to form a civil constitution, in order to avoid war. Kant claims that this civil constitution
should be thought of as necessary. As we “now regard with profound contempt, as barbarous, crude
and degrading”, “the attachment of savages to their lawless freedom” (PP, 8: 354), states should also
leave their unruly condition and enter into a civil constitution.
Kant claims that Europe and America are equally irrational when it comes to war. On this
subject “the difference between the European and the American savages consists mainly in this: that
whereas many tribes of the latter have been eaten up by their enemies, the former knows how to make
better use of those they have defeated than to make a meal of them”. That is, Europe knows how to
make more soldiers for the next war.
Kant objects to the idea of the right of nations as a right only to go to war: “The concept of the
right of nations as a the right to go to war is, strictly speaking, unintelligible (since it is supposed to be a
right to determine what is right not by unilateral maxims through force)” (PP, 8: 357)
In order to be effective against war, Kant distinguishes his league of nations from a pact of peace:
“[S]o there must be a league of special kind, which can be called a pacific league (
foedus pacificum
),
and what would distinguish it from a peace pact (
pactum pacis
) is that the latter seeks to end only one
war whereas the former seeks to end all war forever” (PP, 8: 356)
The league of nations is the middle point between the idea of a state of nations and the idea of a
mere peace pact that does not guarantee a lasting peace:
In accordance with reason there is only one way that states in relation to one another
can leave the lawless condition, which involves nothing but war; it is that, like individual
human beings, they give up their savage (lawless) freedom, accommodate themselves
to public coercive laws, and so form an (always growing) state of nations (
civitas
gentium
) that would finally encompass all the nations of earth. But, in accordance with
their idea of right of nations, they do not all want this, thus rejecting
in hypothesi
what
is correct
in thesi
; so (if all is not to be lost), in place of the positive idea of a world
republic only the negative surrogate of a league that averts war, endures (PP, 8: 357).
Then, in accordance to reason, the states should leave their lawless condition to enter a state of nations
that will include all the nations of the earth. However, this idea of reason, which is correct in thesis, is
rejected by the nations. The surrogate of a state of nations (
civitas gentium
) is a league of nations
(
foedus pacificum
) that averts war.
In the
Metaphysics of Morals
,
Doctrine of Right
, he stresses this idea of the state of nations
as unreachable, although only this state will bring the real possibility of a perpetual peace.
ethic@,
Florianópolis, v.5, n.1, p. 81-90, Jun 2006.
84
BORGES, M. L.
War and Perpetual Peace
Only in a universal association of states (analogous to that by which a people becomes
a state) can rights come to hold conclusively and a true condition of peace come about
(DR, § 61).
Kant gives us some reasons why this state of nations will be impossible: it has to extend too far over
vast regions, which makes it difficult to protect all of its members from war. The consequence of this is
that we can only have an approximation to perpetual peace through an association of several states.
So perpetual peace, the ultimate goal of the whole right of nations, is indeed
an unachievable idea. Still, the political principles directed toward perpetual
peace, of entering into such alliances of states, which serve for continual
approximation
to it, are not unachievable (DR, § 61).
Since perpetual peace itself is an unachievable idea, we can only have principles directed towards
peace that are not to rule over a state of nations, but over a permanent league of states, which each
state is free to join.
Did Kant witness such a political association? He says that something of this kind could be seen
in the first half of the 18
th
century, in the Assembly of the States General at the Hague, where “the
ministers of most of courts of Europe and even of the smallest republics lodged with their complaints
about attacks being made” (DR, §61). However, after some time, this league has disappeared and the
right of nations survived only in books.
Kant does not offer any guarantee that there will be a perpetual peace among states or that
states will finally attain this pacific goal. Since perpetual peace is an idea of reason, it has only a regulative
role: citizens should act as if this goal were possible.
One of the requirements of this progress towards a perpetual peace is that the civil constitution
of states should become republican. Kant divides the forms of state according to the persons who have
power within a state and according to the way a people is governed (PP, 8: 352). The first is the form
of sovereignty (
forma imperii
), which admits of three divisions: autocracy, aristocracy and democracy.
The second one is called the form of government (
form regiminis
) and admits of two forms: republican
or despotic.
A republic is a representative form of government based on the separation of the executive
power from the legislative power. It is the only one in accordance with the idea of right. States can attain
this form of government through reforms.
The league of nations should be composed of republican states, since they are, by their very
nature, pacific states. This league will be formed by a liberal community, which shares the following
institutional and economic conditions: a republican form of government, a market economy, private
property rights, citizens with political rights, and internal and external sovereignty
3
.
ethic@,
Florianópolis, v.5, n.1, p. 81-90, Jun 2006.
BORGES, M.
L.
War and Perpetual Peace
85
2. Hegel’s ironical remarks
In the § 333 of the
Philosophy of Right
, Hegel criticizes all hopes of a possible peace among
nations resulting from a Kantian pact of peace:
Kant had the idea of securing ‘perpetual peace’ by a league of nations that would
adjust every dispute. It was to be a power recognized by each individual state, and it
was to arbitrate in all cases of dissension in order to make it impossible for disputants
to resort to war in order to settle them. This idea presupposes an accord between
states which would rest on moral or religious or other grounds or considerations, but
in any case would always depend ultimately on a particular sovereign will and for that
reason would remain infected with contingency (PR, § 333).
Hegel is skeptical about the possibility of a peace among states, because their treatises are based in
particular and contingent reasons, and not on a sovereign reason above them
4
. He insists that there is no
judge above national states; there can only be a mediator. This mediator is nothing but a particular will,
full of contingency.
The relations among states are the embodiment of contingency and prevent the Kantian solution
of a perpetual peace to be attained through a league of nations. One of the reasons of this contingency
is that, for Hegel, states, in their interaction, are always in a state of nature:
The fundamental proposition of international law (i.e. the universal law which ought to
be absolutely valid between states, as distinguished from the particular content of
positive treaties) is that treaties, as the ground of obligations between states, ought to
be kept. But since the sovereignty of a state is the principle of its relations to others,
states are to that extent in a state of nature in relation to each other. Their rights are
actualized only in their particular wills and not in a universal will with constitutional
powers over them (PR, § 333).
Thus, the idea of a league of nations, in which the national states are supposed to leave this barbarous,
crude and degrading condition of a lawless freedom, is only chimerical. Hegel claims that the very idea
of state hinders the international institution of a
foedus pacificum
.
Kant does not disagree that states can be in [a?] state of nature towards one another. He explicitly
states that in § 54 of
Toward Perpetual Peace
: “[S]tates, considered in external relation to one another,
are (like lawless savages) by nature in a nonrightful condition.” However, his aim was exactly to overcome
the idea of a law of nations as the acceptance of this “state of nature”. Unlike the jurists of the
ius
naturae
et
gentium
(Grocio, Pufendorf, Tomasio, Bodin
5
), Kant aims at attaining a new conception of
ethic@,
Florianópolis, v.5, n.1, p. 81-90, Jun 2006.
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