Hallo, This is Dr. Bin Song in the course of History of Modern Philosophy at Washington College.

As having been indicated by my previous lectures and our former discussions in this course so far, I believe classical philosophers should neither be treated as intellectual idols to blindly follow, nor as punch bags to blame for everything by which we feel unsatisfied today. Human history is deeply ambiguous: progress made at a certain point may be reevaluated as regress, while one specific aspect of a philosopher’ thought may be simultaneously good and bad depending upon your interpretative perspectives. Based upon this deeply ambiguous nature of human history, we should be ultra-careful when we try to learn and analyze classical philosophers: when you agree with them, remember there may be something disagreeable hidden even in the same sentence of their writings; meanwhile, however disagreeable one point of the philosopher’s thought may be, we sometimes also need to sit back for a moment and understand that it may be already a progress compared to its historical predecessors. However, what I do hope from you, my students and readers, is the formation of a free, independent, and responsibly thinking mind so that through learning and discussing all these foundational classical modern philosophers, you can find some clues to conundrums in your own life, in your human relationship, and in the contemporary situations of human society at large. After all, this is what makes philosophical learning exciting.

The first section of the History of Modern Philosophy started from our account of the Thirty Year’s wars, which leads to the legal strategy of the separation of church and state, and we then spent time understanding the philosophical reason and consequence of this principle via Kant’s essay “what is enlightenment” and Locke’s “a letter on toleration.” At this last meeting of the first section, let’s read Kant’s another essay, which was written much later (1795) in his prolific philosophical career and thus represents some of Kant’s deep thought on the prospect of peace of the international human society.

The title of the essay is very self-explanatory: Toward Perpetual Peace – A Philosophical Sketch. What concerns Kant here is not to end any particular war, and hence, he didn’t use many words to discuss technical issues on how to avoid concrete wars of a state. Rather, he is concerned about how to end wars in general, or should we use his words, to end war perpetually. Therefore, while also discussing six “preliminary articles” which are all about technical prerequisites for perpetual peace such as that wars of conquest, secrete diplomacy and permanent armies should all be condemned, Kant laid out three “definitive articles” which Kant thinks to be of the most importance for the prospect of the perpetual peace among states, and these three articles also turn out to be the most influential for the later development of political philosophy, especially in the area of international relationship. Therefore, our lecture will focus upon these three definitive articles.

Kant’s philosophy on practical matters of human life starts from and is centered upon the undeniable existence of human freedom. For Kant, freedom is what distinguishes humans from animals and machines, and thus, a genuine “universal” for all philosophical thinking on the distinctive aspects of human life. Therefore, compared with the issues on how to respect and implement human freedom, happiness is never highlighted by Kant as a focus of ethics. By the same token, social welfare, understood as the collective happiness of citizens of a state, is never taken by Kant the central goal of politics, since happiness pertains to sentiments, desires and emotions which Kant think animals share as well, and thus, cannot be taken as premises of philosophical thinking uniquely universal to human life. (Be wary: this aspect of Kant’s thought can be problematic!) We already see Kant’s devotion to freedom in his formula about how one can become enlightened: think for yourself, argue in public, and obey in private. Similarly, in the area of international relationship, Kant believes that if humans really want a perpetual peace in the long run, every state must be free, they need to form a free association among each other, and then, citizens of these states must be able to freely visit each other.

That every state must be free is represented by the first definitive article of the essay, which means that a state needs to have a representative and check-balanced government so that the decision made by the government truly represents the will of its people. Kant called this form of government “republic,” and argued that republics are less inclined to wars because their people need to take a very careful consideration of the cost of wars before making a decision on whether to launch one. For Kant, this situation does not apply to other forms of governments since rulers otherwise can launch wars without much jeopardy on their personal life.

That free states need to form a free association means that “a federation of states” can be envisioned among states so as to prescribe a certain kind of international laws to prevent world wars.

That citizens have a right to visit foreign states mean that since humans share the same earth, they are essentially cosmopolitan, and therefore, each of them has a right to freely visit other states if without a hostile intention to do so.

Overall, these three articles establish three kinds of laws to guarantee the perpetual peace in Kant’s vision: civil law, international law and cosmopolitan law. So, the remaining question is: do they really work?

Firstly, are democracies (as defined in the form of republic by Kant) really less warlike? Not until the recent decades did scholars start to put Kant’s assertion into test. So far as I know, the majority view among scholars on this issue nowadays is that Kant’s view holds on to certain values, but we also need to revise it significantly. It is not the case the democracies are less warlike in general. The revised view is that only established democracies with their due and mature democratic institutions, such as universal suffrage, check-balance among governmental branches, and free press, are less warlike towards each other; however, regarding young democracies with immature democratic institutions, and regarding established democracies in face of non-democratic regimes, it is by no means the case that democracies are less warlike. So, given the condition that democracies are by no means everywhere in the earth today, the next question for us is that, how do we deal with those states that are either not democratic, or not democratic enough? Do established democracies need to launch wars to overthrow them or forcefully intervene in order to transform them? Isn’t this means of violence contrary to the very end of peace, and thus, doesn’t the violent means make the justification of this sort of intervening wars very difficult, if not entirely baseless? Unfortunately, we didn’t have much thought from Kant in his essay on these questions, who is, you know, arguably the most systematic and rigorous thinker in the history of modern philosophy.

Secondly, does the free association of free states work to prevent world wars? Kant clearly realized that it is far from reality that any international law agreed as such has any coercive power upon members of the so-called federation of states. He mainly envisioned two paths to a solid international union of states: firstly, the most powerful state(s) would like to act as an exemplar and thus, invite other states to join the union; secondly, the natural tendency of states towards wars would put them in a situation similar to Hobbes’s “state of nature,” and thus, Kant believes that in time, nature will propel states to have a rational calculation about the costs of wars, and thus, finally come together to expect the creation of certain international laws or contracts to prevent future wars. Honestly, I am somewhat heartened by these proposed two paths, since they indicate a practical commitment of Kant’s philosophy to how to implement noble philosophical ideals. However, as you may have already had a sense of, these two paths are, to say the most, projective and visionary, and they by no means solve the issue on how international laws agreed by the union of states can have any coercive power as domestic laws within a state have. In reality, the unstable status of the United Nations (which can be seen as an avatar of Kant’s idea), and wars launched by advanced democracies in a way of bypassing the Unites Nations (such as the devastating Iraq war launched by the U.S. and Britain) are more than substantial to confirm the fragile nature of Kant’s second article of perpetual peace. Give the vastly different languages, histories and peoples in different states, Kant does not believe that the entire humanity can form one singular super state, and this view undercuts any possibility of Kant’s philosophy to equip international laws with any solid coercive power. If this is the case, how is the perpetual peace possible per Kant’s projection? The United Nations may already have tried to do their best, yet far from being good.

Thirdly, among all the three articles, I love the third the most. The visiting of people to foreign countries for a variety of purposes increase communication of each other, and thus, is definitively conducive to the formation of a global awareness among the humanity towards the existence of “others.” This global awareness makes it possible to envision a form of “global governance,” rather than the current mode of governance solely based upon discrete, separate, and thus naturally guarded nation-states. As indicated by the above two points, the flaws of Kant’s liberal philosophy on international relationship, despite all its merits, consist mainly in his “atomic” mindset which grants the independent, sovereign, free existence of states as a premise, and then, universalizes it to a global scale. However, in order to effectively remedy these flaws without undermining the reasonable aspects of Kant’s philosophy, we need a more promising philosophical premise to think of states not only as atomic entities, but also as being intrinsically connected to each other despite the differences among them. In other words, philosophers today need to work up towards a genuine global philosophy, or a world philosophy, so as to continually find ways to realize Kant’s ideal of perpetual peace while addressing new global, societal and civilizational challenges. Hopefully, my students, readers and listeners, you can realize the urgency of this cause, and make your unique contribution to it in a due time.