Kant on Peace, Honor and the “Point of View” of Princes, 1755–1795

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12740367
AutoresOlivier Higgins (King's College Hospital, autor de correspondencia)
Año2022
Volumen20
Número3
Páginas738-763
Fecha de publicación2022-09-27
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaModern Intellectual History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1479-2443 • E-ISSN: 1479-2451
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1479244322000476
OpenAlexW4297370882
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas12

By recovering the pre-critical foundations of Immanuel Kant's political idealism, this article elucidates his fundamental concern with reorienting the “point of view” of real princes and sovereigns to the cause of peace. I trace this priority to Kant's reading of Pierre Bayle, whose skepticism illustrated that the true nature of princes rendered Saint-Pierre's ideal of peace “not possible.” Beginning in 1756, Kant reframed perpetual peace as the ultimate political honor for those unmoved by strict moral necessity, promising them a legacy that was entwined with the providential course of human history. This appeal to honor identified the first necessary phase of political change, accounting for ruling motives that might otherwise lead to wars of conquest and expansion. This view of Kant's shrewd attempt to steer the “point of view” of real power, which persisted into his final political writings in the 1790s, challenges dominant readings of a Kantian politics concerned solely with the distant realization of ideal institutions

Appeal · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Honor · Ideal (ethics · Idealism · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Skepticism · Law · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · War, Ethics, and Justification