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Por la paz perpetua & ¿Cómo orientarse en el pensamiento?

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A Immanuel Kant, nacido en Prusia en 1724, se le considera hoy día el mayor representante del idealismo alemán, así como también el más influyente de la filosofía universal.

Por la paz perpetua, obra política que escribió en 1795, tiene como objetivo hallar una estructura mundial y una perspectiva de gobierno de modo que favorezca la paz. No habla, por tanto, de cómo los hombres pueden volverse más buenos; sino de cómo cree él posible construir un orden jurídico que haga de la guerra algo completamente ilegal. Junto con Por la paz perpetua, hemos añadido este artículo kantiano: ¿Cómo orientarse en el pensamiento?, síntesis de sus dos obras filosóficas más importantes: Crítica de la razón pura y Crítica de la razón práctica. En él se ensalza la razón como “última piedra de toque de la verdad” y por ella de la libertad, uno de los conceptos más queridos por el genial filósofo alemán.

128 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1795

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Immanuel Kant

2,876 books4,381 followers
Immanuel 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.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
Profile Image for Luís.
2,386 reviews1,381 followers
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.
Profile Image for Francesca.
223 reviews26 followers
March 22, 2022
I don’t know how but I didn’t learn anything
Profile Image for Nicole ✨Reading Engineer✨.
283 reviews71 followers
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.
Profile Image for Abe Frank.
253 reviews6 followers
Read
February 2, 2023
Manny 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.
Profile Image for Lara Domingos.
8 reviews1 follower
February 2, 2025
tabem pronto, estudo relações internacionais tenho que dizer que foi importante
6 reviews3 followers
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.
Profile Image for Claudia.
335 reviews34 followers
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.
Profile Image for Mark Giaconia.
Author 5 books18 followers
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.
Profile Image for John Lucy.
Author 3 books22 followers
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.
14 reviews
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.
Profile Image for Kara.
540 reviews9 followers
March 20, 2019
man, regardless of the importance of material and ideas, this dude is.............not a thrill to read.
Profile Image for Jamie.
321 reviews260 followers
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.
Profile Image for Ryan Hirst.
6 reviews3 followers
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.
402 reviews1 follower
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.
Profile Image for Zahreen.
441 reviews
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.
Profile Image for Shane  Ha.
66 reviews1 follower
September 27, 2018
Incredible theory but they feel like elaborate sand castles brushed away by the first tide when applied to reality.
Profile Image for Jesse.
147 reviews56 followers
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.
Profile Image for Chase.
64 reviews6 followers
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.
Profile Image for Daniel.
1 review
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.
Profile Image for Tobias.
276 reviews7 followers
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.
Profile Image for Lara Malik.
123 reviews24 followers
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.
47 reviews1 follower
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.
54 reviews6 followers
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.
117 reviews1 follower
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.
Profile Image for A. B..
588 reviews13 followers
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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