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A Paz Perpétua e Outros Opúsculos
A teoria politica de Kant nunca foi objecto de uma obra global como, por exemplo, a sua teoria da ciência ou a sua doutrina ética; encontra-se dispersa por escritos de ocasião, alguns dos quais aqui se propõem. Neles se descobre como a visão do filósofo, mesmo nos problemas práticos da política, parte da sua teoria da razão – o que realça a sistematicidade do seu pensamento.
194 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1795
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About the author
Immanuel Kant
3,070 books4,388 followersImmanuel Kant was an 18th-century philosopher from Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He's regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe & of the late Enlightenment. His most important work is The Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics & epistemology, & highlights his own contribution to these areas. Other main works of his maturity are The Critique of Practical Reason, which is about ethics, & The Critique of Judgment, about esthetics & teleology.
Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed thru epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources & limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality–which he concluded that it does–then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it's possible that there are objects of such a nature that the mind cannot think of them, & so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. So the grand questions of speculative metaphysics are off limits, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists & the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired thru experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists & empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding Kant's system, thus bringing about various forms of German Idealism. Kant continues to be a major influence on philosophy to this day, influencing both Analytic and Continental philosophy.
Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed thru epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources & limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality–which he concluded that it does–then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it's possible that there are objects of such a nature that the mind cannot think of them, & so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. So the grand questions of speculative metaphysics are off limits, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists & the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired thru experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists & empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding Kant's system, thus bringing about various forms of German Idealism. Kant continues to be a major influence on philosophy to this day, influencing both Analytic and Continental philosophy.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
September 2, 2025
A project of perpetual peace. A lucid observation of the war, which is illegitimate. The only legitimate source is the law; the legal framework must structure the agreements between parties, in which case, peace is impossible.
This little book comprises practical proposals that should be conducive to peace between states (such as stopping a standing army that leaves tensions in power).
The ultimate goal is perpetual peace. The latter is temporary and must distinguish between a peace alliance and a treaty. It would consist of a federation of nation-states, similar to the European Union. However, Kant warns us that this federalism must not deny the particularities of the States; each country has its own history and specific customs. They must maintain autonomy.
Two centuries earlier, Kant (he is not the only one; Victor Hugo, Abbé Pierre) laid the foundations of our modern political conceptions in a context of almost permanent war. In particular, the rules of the international chessboard.
Today, even if there is no more war between the States (of the European Union in any case), tensions remain. But, hopefully, they don't upset a precarious balance. The main thing is to frame any joint decision in accordance with the law. Kant, in this respect, is enlightening.
This little book comprises practical proposals that should be conducive to peace between states (such as stopping a standing army that leaves tensions in power).
The ultimate goal is perpetual peace. The latter is temporary and must distinguish between a peace alliance and a treaty. It would consist of a federation of nation-states, similar to the European Union. However, Kant warns us that this federalism must not deny the particularities of the States; each country has its own history and specific customs. They must maintain autonomy.
Two centuries earlier, Kant (he is not the only one; Victor Hugo, Abbé Pierre) laid the foundations of our modern political conceptions in a context of almost permanent war. In particular, the rules of the international chessboard.
Today, even if there is no more war between the States (of the European Union in any case), tensions remain. But, hopefully, they don't upset a precarious balance. The main thing is to frame any joint decision in accordance with the law. Kant, in this respect, is enlightening.
March 22, 2022
I don’t know how but I didn’t learn anything
January 26, 2019
This book was quite interesting as it detailed how countries could reach perpetual peace and is one of the first books to detail how universal human rights need to become part of the world. It was quite lengthy and takes a lot of attention to read, so I don't recommend reading this before bed. Overall, it was an interesting book that helped me better understand philosophy and how global human rights came into existence.
Read
February 2, 2023Manny was so hopeful that things would get better over time that he considered letting us be ruled by aliens if it meant civil society could be established.
February 2, 2025
tabem pronto, estudo relações internacionais tenho que dizer que foi importante
January 15, 2022
É um livro bom mesmo apesar do aparente idealismo político.
O ensaio sobre o iluminismo e a questão do uso da razão é algo bastante interessante. Na parte em si da paz perpétua, há uma referência boa à questão platónica dos filósofos como governantes.
O ensaio sobre o iluminismo e a questão do uso da razão é algo bastante interessante. Na parte em si da paz perpétua, há uma referência boa à questão platónica dos filósofos como governantes.
June 20, 2016
This book is a seminal work by Kant. A great read (completely readable) and rather modern with a globalist/internationalist approach to philosophy. It is very European in its good will and intriguingly cosmopolitan for its time! The subject of this book is peace that should preferably be acquired through State and Republicanism. He examines how war should be waged and how peace can be attained. He also explains sovereignty and State (forma imperii), and considers how pax perpetua can only be attained by democratic states (it appears President George W. Bush wasn’t alone thinking about this eh??!). He agrees with Hobbes that the original state is a state of war and that Nation States must be formed so that peace can be obtained. Kant, in fact believes that States with prospect to form a federation of States, cannot but live in a circumstance of perpetual peace, present the appropriate democratic conditions, with rights of men being respected by all. He would be interested on how this all turned out to be. Perhaps there’s something to this theory in relation to States. But certainly not all turned out to be democracies. And not all are in it to respect their neighbours. I guess this idea (which Kant espouses in this book) is one we may never know in practice. 4 stars.
October 12, 2017
I read the Perpetual Peace essay not long after returning from Iraq as a Green Beret in the Army. The notion of Perpetual Peace was befuddling, especially for me at that time since it challenged everything I had done in my life up to that point. These are very interesting essays, and became part of my own line of thinking about war in the modern world, and a part of my own post-war intellectual evolution that led me to pretty much despise war.
January 19, 2026
Mission 2026: Binge reviewing all previous Reads, I was too slothful to review back when I read them
Reading Kant’s 'Perpetual Peace and Other Essays' today feels uncannily like listening to a severe, slightly irritable, but profoundly honest elder who refuses to indulge our illusions. This is not a comforting book. It does not flatter human nature, nor does it console us with easy optimism about progress.
And yet, paradoxically, it is one of the most quietly hopeful political texts ever written. Kant’s hope is not emotional or sentimental; it is structural, conditional, and hard-earned. He hopes not because humans are good, but because they can be constrained into behaving better.
My first reaction, returning to this text after years of encountering it only through secondary commentary, was surprise at how readable and even sly it is. Kant is often caricatured as forbidding, mechanical, and airless.
But 'Perpetual Peace' in particular has a dry wit and a deliberate provocativeness that feels almost modern. The very framing of the essay as a “treaty” between states, complete with preliminary and definitive articles, reads like a philosophical performance.
Kant knows the world he is addressing: cynical diplomats, war-hardened monarchs, and armchair realists who believe conflict is inevitable. He chooses not to plead with them morally at first, but to trap them logically.
What struck me most forcefully is how relentlessly Kant dismantles the romance of war. Long before the mechanized slaughter of the twentieth century, Kant already sees war not as a tragic necessity but as a moral scandal masquerading as realism. His claim that standing armies should be abolished feels radical even now, and almost laughable in our era of permanent military readiness. Yet the argument behind it is devastatingly clear: standing armies normalize the idea of war as policy rather than failure.
They transform violence into a budget line item. Kant does not deny that states will prepare for conflict; he insists that institutionalizing preparation ensures conflict will arrive.
There is a bracing honesty in Kant’s refusal to sentimentalize sovereignty. States, he argues, behave like individuals in a lawless condition when no higher legal framework binds them.
This analogy between individuals in the state of nature and states in international anarchy has been repeated endlessly since Kant, but reading it at the source reveals its ethical sharpness.
Kant is not describing a tragic inevitability; he is issuing an indictment. If we would not excuse individuals who resolve disputes through violence, why do we tolerate it among states?
Yet Kant is not naïve. He has no illusions that rulers will suddenly become virtuous. One of the most unsettling aspects of the essay is his insistence that perpetual peace does not require moral improvement. It requires better institutions.
This is Kant at his most disenchanted and, paradoxically, most persuasive. He trusts reason, not goodness. He assumes self-interest, not altruism. Republican constitutions, he argues, make war harder because those who bear its costs have a say in declaring it. This is not a claim about democratic virtue; it is a claim about risk distribution.
As someone reading this in a century shaped by both democratic wars and authoritarian peace, I found myself constantly arguing with Kant in my head. History has not fully vindicated his optimism about republics. And yet, it has not refuted him either.
Democracies do go to war, but rarely lightly, and almost never without elaborate justification. Kant’s insight is not that republics are peaceful, but that they are slower, more self-conscious, and more conflicted about violence. That hesitation matters. It introduces friction into the machinery of war.
The famous idea of a federation of free states is often misunderstood as a call for a world government. Kant explicitly rejects this. He fears global despotism as much as international anarchy. What he proposes instead is something more fragile and more realistic: a voluntary league grounded in law rather than coercion.
Reading this after decades of observing institutions like the United Nations is sobering. Kant anticipates their weakness, their dependence on goodwill, and their vulnerability to power politics. And yet he insists that even flawed legal frameworks are morally superior to none at all.
One of the most personally unsettling sections of the book is Kant’s discussion of hospitality. His notion of “cosmopolitan right” is modest to the point of austerity. He does not advocate open borders or universal belonging. He argues instead for a right of visitation, the right not to be treated with hostility upon arrival. In an era of mass migration, refugee crises, and fortress borders, this restrained moral demand feels both insufficient and revolutionary.
Kant does not ask states to love the stranger; he asks them not to brutalize him. The bar is low, and we still fail it regularly.
What gives 'Perpetual Peace' its enduring power is Kant’s bleak anthropology. Humans, he insists, are driven by what he famously calls “unsocial sociability.” We need others, but we resent them. We seek recognition, but resist constraint. This tension, Kant argues, is not an obstacle to progress but its engine.
Conflict, competition, and pride push humans to create institutions that restrain them. Peace emerges not from harmony but from exhaustion, calculation, and mutual limitation.
Reading this, I felt an uncomfortable recognition. Kant’s peace is not beautiful. It is procedural. It is built on checks, balances, and mutual distrust. There is something almost tragic about this vision, and yet it feels more honest than utopian alternatives.
Kant refuses to imagine a transformed humanity. He imagines a constrained one. In doing so, he anticipates modern liberalism’s deepest tension: the desire to create moral outcomes without requiring moral people.
The other essays in the volume deepen this impression. Kant’s reflections on enlightenment, history, and progress reveal a thinker painfully aware of the gap between ideals and reality. His famous call to “dare to know” is not triumphant; it is cautious. Enlightenment, for Kant, is slow, reversible, and fragile. Freedom of thought does not guarantee wisdom. Reason does not abolish power.
Again and again, Kant insists that progress is possible without being inevitable.
What moved me most, unexpectedly, was the tone of moral seriousness without moral hysteria. Kant does not shout. He does not moralize in the modern sense. He argues patiently, often coldly, as if aware that passion alone cannot sustain peace. In a world saturated with moral outrage and apocalyptic rhetoric, this restraint feels almost alien. Kant does not demand that we feel differently; he demands that we organize differently.
There are moments where the book feels dated, particularly in its Eurocentric assumptions and its limited engagement with colonial violence. Kant’s own record on race and empire complicates any straightforward admiration. Reading him now requires a double awareness: of his brilliance and of his blind spots. Yet even here, the text provokes rather than pacifies.
Kant’s insistence that conquest cannot produce legitimate sovereignty stands in quiet tension with Europe’s imperial history, including Germany’s own.
What lingers after finishing 'Perpetual Peace and Other Essays' is not confidence but responsibility. Kant does not promise peace; he sketches the conditions under which peace might become rational. He leaves the rest to us.
The book feels less like a prophecy than a challenge: if peace is possible, it will be because we built institutions strong enough to survive our worst impulses.
Returning this book to the shelf, I felt neither inspired nor despondent, but sharpened. Kant strips away comforting myths and leaves us with a stark choice: either accept perpetual war as normal, or do the difficult, unglamorous work of limiting power through law. In an age that oscillates between cynicism and moral absolutism, Kant’s severe moderation feels strangely radical.
'Perpetual Peace and Other Essays' is not a book that changes how you feel about the world. It changes how you think about what peace actually demands. And that, in the long run, may be far more unsettling.
Most recommended.
Reading Kant’s 'Perpetual Peace and Other Essays' today feels uncannily like listening to a severe, slightly irritable, but profoundly honest elder who refuses to indulge our illusions. This is not a comforting book. It does not flatter human nature, nor does it console us with easy optimism about progress.
And yet, paradoxically, it is one of the most quietly hopeful political texts ever written. Kant’s hope is not emotional or sentimental; it is structural, conditional, and hard-earned. He hopes not because humans are good, but because they can be constrained into behaving better.
My first reaction, returning to this text after years of encountering it only through secondary commentary, was surprise at how readable and even sly it is. Kant is often caricatured as forbidding, mechanical, and airless.
But 'Perpetual Peace' in particular has a dry wit and a deliberate provocativeness that feels almost modern. The very framing of the essay as a “treaty” between states, complete with preliminary and definitive articles, reads like a philosophical performance.
Kant knows the world he is addressing: cynical diplomats, war-hardened monarchs, and armchair realists who believe conflict is inevitable. He chooses not to plead with them morally at first, but to trap them logically.
What struck me most forcefully is how relentlessly Kant dismantles the romance of war. Long before the mechanized slaughter of the twentieth century, Kant already sees war not as a tragic necessity but as a moral scandal masquerading as realism. His claim that standing armies should be abolished feels radical even now, and almost laughable in our era of permanent military readiness. Yet the argument behind it is devastatingly clear: standing armies normalize the idea of war as policy rather than failure.
They transform violence into a budget line item. Kant does not deny that states will prepare for conflict; he insists that institutionalizing preparation ensures conflict will arrive.
There is a bracing honesty in Kant’s refusal to sentimentalize sovereignty. States, he argues, behave like individuals in a lawless condition when no higher legal framework binds them.
This analogy between individuals in the state of nature and states in international anarchy has been repeated endlessly since Kant, but reading it at the source reveals its ethical sharpness.
Kant is not describing a tragic inevitability; he is issuing an indictment. If we would not excuse individuals who resolve disputes through violence, why do we tolerate it among states?
Yet Kant is not naïve. He has no illusions that rulers will suddenly become virtuous. One of the most unsettling aspects of the essay is his insistence that perpetual peace does not require moral improvement. It requires better institutions.
This is Kant at his most disenchanted and, paradoxically, most persuasive. He trusts reason, not goodness. He assumes self-interest, not altruism. Republican constitutions, he argues, make war harder because those who bear its costs have a say in declaring it. This is not a claim about democratic virtue; it is a claim about risk distribution.
As someone reading this in a century shaped by both democratic wars and authoritarian peace, I found myself constantly arguing with Kant in my head. History has not fully vindicated his optimism about republics. And yet, it has not refuted him either.
Democracies do go to war, but rarely lightly, and almost never without elaborate justification. Kant’s insight is not that republics are peaceful, but that they are slower, more self-conscious, and more conflicted about violence. That hesitation matters. It introduces friction into the machinery of war.
The famous idea of a federation of free states is often misunderstood as a call for a world government. Kant explicitly rejects this. He fears global despotism as much as international anarchy. What he proposes instead is something more fragile and more realistic: a voluntary league grounded in law rather than coercion.
Reading this after decades of observing institutions like the United Nations is sobering. Kant anticipates their weakness, their dependence on goodwill, and their vulnerability to power politics. And yet he insists that even flawed legal frameworks are morally superior to none at all.
One of the most personally unsettling sections of the book is Kant’s discussion of hospitality. His notion of “cosmopolitan right” is modest to the point of austerity. He does not advocate open borders or universal belonging. He argues instead for a right of visitation, the right not to be treated with hostility upon arrival. In an era of mass migration, refugee crises, and fortress borders, this restrained moral demand feels both insufficient and revolutionary.
Kant does not ask states to love the stranger; he asks them not to brutalize him. The bar is low, and we still fail it regularly.
What gives 'Perpetual Peace' its enduring power is Kant’s bleak anthropology. Humans, he insists, are driven by what he famously calls “unsocial sociability.” We need others, but we resent them. We seek recognition, but resist constraint. This tension, Kant argues, is not an obstacle to progress but its engine.
Conflict, competition, and pride push humans to create institutions that restrain them. Peace emerges not from harmony but from exhaustion, calculation, and mutual limitation.
Reading this, I felt an uncomfortable recognition. Kant’s peace is not beautiful. It is procedural. It is built on checks, balances, and mutual distrust. There is something almost tragic about this vision, and yet it feels more honest than utopian alternatives.
Kant refuses to imagine a transformed humanity. He imagines a constrained one. In doing so, he anticipates modern liberalism’s deepest tension: the desire to create moral outcomes without requiring moral people.
The other essays in the volume deepen this impression. Kant’s reflections on enlightenment, history, and progress reveal a thinker painfully aware of the gap between ideals and reality. His famous call to “dare to know” is not triumphant; it is cautious. Enlightenment, for Kant, is slow, reversible, and fragile. Freedom of thought does not guarantee wisdom. Reason does not abolish power.
Again and again, Kant insists that progress is possible without being inevitable.
What moved me most, unexpectedly, was the tone of moral seriousness without moral hysteria. Kant does not shout. He does not moralize in the modern sense. He argues patiently, often coldly, as if aware that passion alone cannot sustain peace. In a world saturated with moral outrage and apocalyptic rhetoric, this restraint feels almost alien. Kant does not demand that we feel differently; he demands that we organize differently.
There are moments where the book feels dated, particularly in its Eurocentric assumptions and its limited engagement with colonial violence. Kant’s own record on race and empire complicates any straightforward admiration. Reading him now requires a double awareness: of his brilliance and of his blind spots. Yet even here, the text provokes rather than pacifies.
Kant’s insistence that conquest cannot produce legitimate sovereignty stands in quiet tension with Europe’s imperial history, including Germany’s own.
What lingers after finishing 'Perpetual Peace and Other Essays' is not confidence but responsibility. Kant does not promise peace; he sketches the conditions under which peace might become rational. He leaves the rest to us.
The book feels less like a prophecy than a challenge: if peace is possible, it will be because we built institutions strong enough to survive our worst impulses.
Returning this book to the shelf, I felt neither inspired nor despondent, but sharpened. Kant strips away comforting myths and leaves us with a stark choice: either accept perpetual war as normal, or do the difficult, unglamorous work of limiting power through law. In an age that oscillates between cynicism and moral absolutism, Kant’s severe moderation feels strangely radical.
'Perpetual Peace and Other Essays' is not a book that changes how you feel about the world. It changes how you think about what peace actually demands. And that, in the long run, may be far more unsettling.
Most recommended.
October 12, 2017
There are seeds in these essays of Kant's larger project centered on duty, but even without learning about Kant's general line of thought these essays are interesting reading. Regarding Kant's overall project, the essay on theory being inherently practical is perhaps the most enlightening. Theory dictates action, which then becomes practical; even if the theory doesn't apply exactly or even closely. For Kant, a theory that is not of use, or appears not to be of use, means that the theory needs to be clarified and refined, not that it is not practical. All reason, for Kant, is practical.
The essay on a universal history is clearly Christian, or religious, in nature: that there is some end or purpose to which history is progressing, and that human history proves that progression is inevitable. The essay is not all that persuasive, though Kant may not have intended to be.
The speculation on the beginning of human history, while always fun to reflect upon, is perhaps the weakest attempt that I have read, from Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and others.
The headlining essay, Perpetual Peace, is solid and worthy of serious reflection. There are a number of good ideas in there, like not incurring foreign debt, and a number that, in today's society, we'd find naïve or even ignorant. Unfortunately, much of Kant's hope for building a world where perpetual peace may be possible depends upon human nature's being better than it is. For instance, one of his first principles is that standing armies should be gradually abolished. And, later, almost predicting MLK's famous statement, Kant says that "a transgression of rights in one place in the world is felt everywhere." The problem here is that, to the latter, many will ask, "But will anyone care?", and to the former will wonder if any nation or people would be willing to abolish its standing army. Yes, some have, but the biggest and largest countries have not.
This problem of optimistically considering human nature is present throughout Kant's thinking, of course. The very idea that humans follow and fulfill duty assumes that we are moral beings. Even as a Christian, like Kant, I question whether this optimism is well placed.
The essay on a universal history is clearly Christian, or religious, in nature: that there is some end or purpose to which history is progressing, and that human history proves that progression is inevitable. The essay is not all that persuasive, though Kant may not have intended to be.
The speculation on the beginning of human history, while always fun to reflect upon, is perhaps the weakest attempt that I have read, from Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and others.
The headlining essay, Perpetual Peace, is solid and worthy of serious reflection. There are a number of good ideas in there, like not incurring foreign debt, and a number that, in today's society, we'd find naïve or even ignorant. Unfortunately, much of Kant's hope for building a world where perpetual peace may be possible depends upon human nature's being better than it is. For instance, one of his first principles is that standing armies should be gradually abolished. And, later, almost predicting MLK's famous statement, Kant says that "a transgression of rights in one place in the world is felt everywhere." The problem here is that, to the latter, many will ask, "But will anyone care?", and to the former will wonder if any nation or people would be willing to abolish its standing army. Yes, some have, but the biggest and largest countries have not.
This problem of optimistically considering human nature is present throughout Kant's thinking, of course. The very idea that humans follow and fulfill duty assumes that we are moral beings. Even as a Christian, like Kant, I question whether this optimism is well placed.
October 27, 2025
Despite being a little under 150 pages, this book took so much longer to read than I had first thought. Kant's method and way of describing and explaining his positions and theories are so complex and detailed that it feels almost disjointed when reading them for the first time. I feel as if Kant wrote more for himself and to externalize his thoughts rather than to truly make them accessible to the broader public. The writing style took some getting used to, and I'm still not sure that this little taste of his philosophy was enough for me to truly grasp the depth of what he described.
This book actually contains a lot more than just political meditations, as he has long tracts on the evolution of humans and development of human nature and the "natural" state of the world and politics in contrast to the superior "moral" doctrine that he further develops in his ethical worldview of deontology. He also discusses the emergence of the Enlightenment and puts forth a fairly unique and early liberal political worldview, which seems surprisingly similar to many parts of the world in which we live today.
This book actually contains a lot more than just political meditations, as he has long tracts on the evolution of humans and development of human nature and the "natural" state of the world and politics in contrast to the superior "moral" doctrine that he further develops in his ethical worldview of deontology. He also discusses the emergence of the Enlightenment and puts forth a fairly unique and early liberal political worldview, which seems surprisingly similar to many parts of the world in which we live today.
January 14, 2025
Did not age well
December 28, 2025
i get why they call this man an idealist lol
March 20, 2019
man, regardless of the importance of material and ideas, this dude is.............not a thrill to read.
December 17, 2010
Surprisingly fun read, as I've never been able to get into Kant before. Here, Immanuel wants to figure out how to create an ideal cosmopolitan world, where states are sovereign but mutually cooperative and the nation itself best facilitates the morality of its subjects. For Kant, this means idealizing a republican state rather than a democratic one (which he sees as enabling a kind of mob morality/reign) and ensuring that the distinction between the public and private usage of reason remains clear and balanced (public: a subject in under the constraint of another, and so must use his reason skeptically, but ultimately within the bounds of his patron's conception of reason--a clergyman would be an example; private - scholars and philosophers exemplify the 'private' reasoners for Kant).
Part of the reason this was so fun is because Kant just has a friggin' weird imagination. His essay on the "Speculative Beginning of History," where he basically imagines the emergence of reason/civilization by outlining the 'reality' of genesis; & also his essay on "The End of All Things," which is basically a meditation on the apocalypse (complete with an understanding of the end of the world as spawned through the betrayal of Christian ideals by its practitioners)--these are just completely bizarre, albeit logical, and really fantastic reads, even if, like me, you are an atheist, and have little interest in faith, religion, or the afterlife.
Nevertheless, Kant's exploration of *why* we require the idea of an 'after' to our sensuous world is truly fascinating, and I think holds even if you have no religious affiliation of belief. It seems we cannot reach perfected reason or morality in this world--Kant's notion of perpetual peace, as I understand it, lies only in the afterlife; in the supersensuous world, which he believes to be unintelligible, as we cannot imagine our 'selves' outside of time and space (which would be his vision of the afterlife). Yet only in that world can our reason come to fruition, and the sensuous world (where we must nonetheless cultivate reason, though it is not the 'natural' state of things--Kant believes we are inclined toward aggression, and develop reason in order to harmonize with the other) will hopefully near its own idealization through a unity of the 'perfected' cosmopolitan state.
Part of the reason this was so fun is because Kant just has a friggin' weird imagination. His essay on the "Speculative Beginning of History," where he basically imagines the emergence of reason/civilization by outlining the 'reality' of genesis; & also his essay on "The End of All Things," which is basically a meditation on the apocalypse (complete with an understanding of the end of the world as spawned through the betrayal of Christian ideals by its practitioners)--these are just completely bizarre, albeit logical, and really fantastic reads, even if, like me, you are an atheist, and have little interest in faith, religion, or the afterlife.
Nevertheless, Kant's exploration of *why* we require the idea of an 'after' to our sensuous world is truly fascinating, and I think holds even if you have no religious affiliation of belief. It seems we cannot reach perfected reason or morality in this world--Kant's notion of perpetual peace, as I understand it, lies only in the afterlife; in the supersensuous world, which he believes to be unintelligible, as we cannot imagine our 'selves' outside of time and space (which would be his vision of the afterlife). Yet only in that world can our reason come to fruition, and the sensuous world (where we must nonetheless cultivate reason, though it is not the 'natural' state of things--Kant believes we are inclined toward aggression, and develop reason in order to harmonize with the other) will hopefully near its own idealization through a unity of the 'perfected' cosmopolitan state.
November 29, 2011
Four stars with a qualification: It's Kant. He assumes the structure, once built, will work by magic, which is both silly and untrue.
However, the structure he builds in this essay is beautiful. On the shoulders of this essay, the League of Nations was founded.
Obviously, we are able to manipulate structures against their agreed purposes. Perpetual Peace is only a declaration of what one might build. His assurances that, once built, it will be inviolable, are hollow.
Still, the declaration is a compelling vision. Shall we not declare our intention to put no authority above the cooperation of all free and sovereign states, to the sole end of guaranting those principles which we believe to be universally just?
If you are wary of such universal declarations, good. Here, Kant is at his best. And readable, too. Did I forget to say that? It's READABLE.
Of course, all the arguments will run the wrong way. It might drive you crazy. My copy is covered in pencil scrawl. It was worth the battle.
However, the structure he builds in this essay is beautiful. On the shoulders of this essay, the League of Nations was founded.
Obviously, we are able to manipulate structures against their agreed purposes. Perpetual Peace is only a declaration of what one might build. His assurances that, once built, it will be inviolable, are hollow.
Still, the declaration is a compelling vision. Shall we not declare our intention to put no authority above the cooperation of all free and sovereign states, to the sole end of guaranting those principles which we believe to be universally just?
If you are wary of such universal declarations, good. Here, Kant is at his best. And readable, too. Did I forget to say that? It's READABLE.
Of course, all the arguments will run the wrong way. It might drive you crazy. My copy is covered in pencil scrawl. It was worth the battle.
September 10, 2016
It is surprising how modern many of Kant's thoughts are. I can't give it 5 stars, though, because he is so damn wordy. The book and essays are not very long, but he could honestly shorten EVERYTHING here by at least 50% without losing anything. Oh well. It's whatever. Worth checking out, I guess, but nothing world changing in the modern world, though it did appear to influence many later works and leaders.
May 23, 2007
I love his essay on "Perpetual Peace" - everyone should read this essay - it would make the world a better place...no kidding. It's absolutely idealistic, but idealism is what this world needs - it certainly was what I needed freshman year of college, when I first read the essay.
September 27, 2018
Incredible theory but they feel like elaborate sand castles brushed away by the first tide when applied to reality.
February 13, 2023
caguei nos opúsculos
February 17, 2022
For all of Kant's talk about the compatibility of theory and practice, he is terrible at putting his seemingly radical moral views to any interesting use. From his moral theory, he derives banal or terrible duties such as "thou shalt not lie" and "thou shalt obey tyrants". His view of historical progress is that the Laws of Human Nature, by encouraging selfish trade a la Adam Smith, will lead to Enlightened Rulers who, for all their other failings, give Freedom of Speech to philosophers. The philosophers will seek to develop Universal Reason and hence better Moral Principles, which eventually the Rulers will adopt of their own accord.
His essays on religion were more interesting than the political essays. He tries to justify the conception of heaven/hell, or at least the Judgement Day, in a rational as opposed to religious manner. His idea is roughly that since we can have no conception of time after our death, our self-view of our "worthiness of happiness" must be thought to be frozen forever, and hence we are forced to imagine an eternity of either guilty or self-satisfied moral feelings.
I did not find his attempts to derive a rational conception of the immortality of the soul as convincing. His logic is that, for the "highest good", a world where moral duty and happiness coincide, to be imaginable, we have to imagine perpetual progress of the world towards that goal. However, he concludes that we must also believe in the perpetual progress of our own moral worth, and hence the immortality of the soul. This seems contradictory with the above argument about heaven/hell, and also full of non-sequiturs. Why do I have to hope for my own perpetual progress to hope for the world's perpetual progress?
It seems to me that if he resolved the contradictions in this argument, he would reject the static conceptions of heaven and hell and be led to either Spinoza's pantheism (which he denies) or to Hegel's world-spirit (which was yet to be written). For it would be more satisfactory to say that, in order for a rational being to act morally, it ought to hope that its moral acts will be incorporated into the eventual progress of the world. In that way the immortality is not of the individual, monist soul, but a world-soul which the rational being partakes in and dissolves back into.
His essays on religion were more interesting than the political essays. He tries to justify the conception of heaven/hell, or at least the Judgement Day, in a rational as opposed to religious manner. His idea is roughly that since we can have no conception of time after our death, our self-view of our "worthiness of happiness" must be thought to be frozen forever, and hence we are forced to imagine an eternity of either guilty or self-satisfied moral feelings.
I did not find his attempts to derive a rational conception of the immortality of the soul as convincing. His logic is that, for the "highest good", a world where moral duty and happiness coincide, to be imaginable, we have to imagine perpetual progress of the world towards that goal. However, he concludes that we must also believe in the perpetual progress of our own moral worth, and hence the immortality of the soul. This seems contradictory with the above argument about heaven/hell, and also full of non-sequiturs. Why do I have to hope for my own perpetual progress to hope for the world's perpetual progress?
It seems to me that if he resolved the contradictions in this argument, he would reject the static conceptions of heaven and hell and be led to either Spinoza's pantheism (which he denies) or to Hegel's world-spirit (which was yet to be written). For it would be more satisfactory to say that, in order for a rational being to act morally, it ought to hope that its moral acts will be incorporated into the eventual progress of the world. In that way the immortality is not of the individual, monist soul, but a world-soul which the rational being partakes in and dissolves back into.
March 9, 2022
Immanuel Kant in this short pamphlet explores the origin of the state following other thinkers like Hobbes and Rousseau. Kant asks if it is possible for perpetual peace to come about through a international order of sovereign states, respecting each other's sovereignty. Much of this "international order" can be defined by the one seen today following the end of the Cold War, where neoliberalism, austerity, and globalization has taken power over most of the world. Kant argues against the concept of a "international government", but still in essence promotes the ideal of international organizations, democracy, and economic sovereignty to be the foundation of this "perpetual peace".
Something I did appreciate while reading this text was the historicity found in his defining of democracy, which emerges from the period of aristocracy and monarchy. While certainly not as wide a scope that Marx conveys half a century later, Kant's observation of the emerging role of the bourgeoisie (who he refers to 'as the people', as there is not in this period of history an amalgamating proletariat) is intriguing.
Something I did appreciate while reading this text was the historicity found in his defining of democracy, which emerges from the period of aristocracy and monarchy. While certainly not as wide a scope that Marx conveys half a century later, Kant's observation of the emerging role of the bourgeoisie (who he refers to 'as the people', as there is not in this period of history an amalgamating proletariat) is intriguing.
January 12, 2022
La edición 2017 en español de este texto de Kant contiene demasiados errores tipográficos y de puntuación, lo que dificulta la lectura de un, ya conocido, entreverado autor.
Es un clásico del pensamiento racionalista. Tesis previas de su célebre "Fundamentación de la metafísica de las costumbres". Es un texto ético-político que, a mi sorpresa ya que lo desconocía, fue piedra angular para la creación de la Liga de las Naciones en 1939.
Me sorprendió que fuera una lectura, a pesar de todo, amena. Considero que presenta ideas muy avanzadas a su época, hoy un poco vetustas, con un marcadísimo enfoque antropocéntrico (en un momento de "Cómo orientarse en el pensamiento", se autodenomina dentro de los "hombres comunes" refiriéndose a quienes se guían por la razón).
Lectura interesante para los interesados en la filosofía política y la ética, de un autor clásico, con una edición que claramente presenta espacio para mejorarse en el futuro.
Es un clásico del pensamiento racionalista. Tesis previas de su célebre "Fundamentación de la metafísica de las costumbres". Es un texto ético-político que, a mi sorpresa ya que lo desconocía, fue piedra angular para la creación de la Liga de las Naciones en 1939.
Me sorprendió que fuera una lectura, a pesar de todo, amena. Considero que presenta ideas muy avanzadas a su época, hoy un poco vetustas, con un marcadísimo enfoque antropocéntrico (en un momento de "Cómo orientarse en el pensamiento", se autodenomina dentro de los "hombres comunes" refiriéndose a quienes se guían por la razón).
Lectura interesante para los interesados en la filosofía política y la ética, de un autor clásico, con una edición que claramente presenta espacio para mejorarse en el futuro.
December 14, 2018
Was soll man sagen?! Die Teile, die ich verstanden habe, waren sehr gut - äußerst interessant Kants genauer Argumentation zu folgen. Allerdings hat er mich auch oft abgehängt... vielleicht sollte ich das Buch nochmal lesen wenn ich mehr schlauer bin.
July 17, 2019
La verdad, es que me costó disfrutar este libro, debido a los horrores de redacción. Sí, dije horrores.
No sé quién fue el encargado de revisarlo, pero faltaban hasta signos de exclamación.
Tal vez la próxima vez pueda entenderlo de forma apropiada.
No sé quién fue el encargado de revisarlo, pero faltaban hasta signos de exclamación.
Tal vez la próxima vez pueda entenderlo de forma apropiada.
March 6, 2020
The piece on Enlightenment is excellent, but the other essays offer only glimpses of interesting ideas (from a contemporary standpoint). Even the piece on Perpetual peace disappointed me; I don't see much use to this beyond what concerns the philological.
April 9, 2020
Kant as a proto-cosmopolitan ushering in international institutions like the EU, UN, WTO, etc. And as a champion of reason in the republican public sphere that improves the efficacy of states and religious institutions even (surprisingly), leading to peace and free commerce.
October 17, 2020
Important et semble avoir été un ouvrage influent vu les parralèles avec le monde contemporain. Par contre, même si l'essai est court, il s'agit d'une lecture très peu agréable vu le style de l'auteur.
September 2, 2024
Read this as part of a wider coursepack on Kant's political philosophy. There were various selections from the Doctrine of Right too. Kant's liberalism and cosmopolitanism is refreshing and liberating.
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