Kant eirenikos: republicanism, commerce 
and the law of nations 
Tomaž Mastnak 
um ewigen Frieden (ZeF) is Kant's most popular text. As his 
S J Critiques are certainly not unknown, this popularity implies that the 
treatise on the eternal peace was widely read also by a non-philosophical 
Publikum. At the beginning of the nineteenth century when peace societies 
began to emerge in Europe and America, the Königsberg professor, already 
gone, was made a pacifist. His pacifist reputation has remained up to the 
present. It has particularly flourished in the periods preceding and following 
the upheaval of a major war. In the decades overshadowed by the two World 
Wars, the treatise appeared in numerous reprints and translations, and found a 
wide readership. Since the first Hague Peace Conference, Kant has repeatedly 
been imputed with the intellectual coresponsibility for the emerging 
international organization, materialized in the League of Nations and then the 
United Nations, and even for the fantasmatic »United States of Europe.« 
More than once he has suffered in the hands of those who cherished his 
memory; they distorted his thoughts in order to make them compatible with 
their own ideas about what was conducive to peace. Kantian professors 
defended him from his adversaries, no one defended him from these well 
intentioned friends. 
There is no doubt, however, that Kant has entered the European irenic 
tradition. Yet the aim of this text is not to reconstruct this tradition; I am 
concerned with traditions of the languages of political theory to which Kant 
referred, or might have referred, when formulating his views on peace. I will 
argue that there are three main discursive traditions to which Kant's idea of 
the eternal peace is related: classical republicanism (civic humanism); 
jurisprudence and especially the law of nations; and the language of 
commerce. Kant's originality lies in combining these languages; a result of his 
taking the jus gentium seriously compels him to recognize the limits of both 
republicanism and the ideology of commerce, which makes his vision of 
international peace superior to other models available at the time (and to 
The research for this essay was assisted by an a ward from the Social Science Research Council of 
an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellowship on Pence and Security in a Changing World. Most of 
the research was done during my visit to the Department of History, The Johns Hopkins 
University, Baltimore. A great inspiration for this work has been the seminar Empire, 
Confederation and Republic: From Atlantic Dominion to American Union, conducted by the 
Folger Institute Center for the History of British Political Thought, and directed by J.G.A. 
Pocock. 
116 Tomaž Mastna k 
much of what has come in circulation since then). By discussing Kant in this 
general context, and focusing on ZeF, I hope to contribute to the clarification 
of Kant's position in the specific context of the history of »European peace.« 
Kant's allegiance to republicanism was explicit. The first definitive article of 
ZeF - »Die bürgerliche Verfassung in jedem Staate soll republikanisch sein« 
(WA XI, 204)1 - is an unequivocal declaration of republican credo. Kant's 
republicanism, however, cannot be unproblematically accommodated to the 
tradition of classical republicanism. In his philosophy of law and state, on the 
basis of the distinction between forma imperii and forma regimini, the republic 
is a Form der Regierung, and as such a conceivable form in which either 
autocratic (or monocratic: AA XXIII , 160), aristocratic or democratic state 
authority could be exercised. »In alien drey Staatsformen kann die 
Regierungsform republicanisch seyn.« (AA XXIII , 159.) A normative 
dimension is added to this »organizational« description when republic is related 
to the other form of government. It is opposed to despotism and distinguished 
from it by the separation between executive and legislative power. This 
dualistic version of the doctrine of the separation of powers appears only in 
ZeF and differs from a more conventional trias elsewhere in Kant's work 
(which, again, differs in principle from Montesquieu's Anglo-liberal 
postulate). Because it involves conceptual difficulties,2 it might be assumed 
that it was not introduced in order to provide a conceptual solution but rather 
to support Kant's argument against democratism. Despotism was the concept 
synthesising a century of polemics against royal absolutism3 and its antithesis 
was, commonly, democracy. Kant's opposition between despotism and 
republicanism made it possible to characterize democracy »im eigentlichen 
Verstände des Worts« as the one »unter den drei Staatrsformen« which is 
»notwendig ein Despotism.« (Cf. WA XI, 207.) 
Positively, Kant's republic is defined as the only constitution which »aus der 
Idee des ursprünglichen Vertrags hervorgeht« and is, consequently, »was das 
Recht betrifft, an sich selbst diejenige, welche allen Arten der bürgerlichen 
Konstitution ursprünglich zum Grunde liegt.« ( W A XI, 204.) The process of 
the realization of the constitution which corresponds to the juridical reason is 
therefore »ein Prozess der Republikanisierung staatlicher Herrschaft« so that 
»erst in einer Republik die Verwirklichung des Rechtsvernunft an ihr Ziel 
1. I use Immanuel Kant, Werkausgabe, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M 1977 
(WA), and Kant's gesammelte Schriften, published by Preußischen Akademie der 
Wisenschaften (from the vol. X X I V on, by Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR and 
Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen), Berlin 1900 - (AA). 
2 . Wolfgang Kersting, Wohlgeordnete Freiheit: Immanuel Kants Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie, 
Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/New York 1984, p. 279 sq. 
3 . Franco Venturi, »Towards a Historical Dictionary: Oriental Despotism«, in Venturi, Italy 
and the Enlightenment. Studies in a Cosmopolitan Century, ed. Stuart Woolf, New York 
University Press. 
Kant eirenikös: republicanism. 117 
kommt.«4 Republic is the legal/juridical accomplishment of the status civilis 
which is based on the following principles a priori: »1. Die Freiheit jedes 
Gliedes der Sozietät, als Menschen. - 2. Die Gleichheit desselben mit jeden 
anderen, als Untertan. - 3. Die Selbstständigkeit jedes Gliedes eines gemeinen 
Wesens, als Bürgers.« ( WA XI, 145.) 
Kant differs from the traditional contract theories in that that he derives the 
constitution of the state from the insight in the universally binding moral 
obligation to negate the Rechtslosigkeit of the state of nature and form a 
juridical association in which every »man« could equally exercise his external 
freedom under general public laws. The constitution of the state power is 
legitimized »nach dem principio exeundum e statu naturali« (AA X I X , R 
7961; cf. A A XXIII , 157); the »Recht auf Staat« and »Pflicht zum Staat« 
logically precede the contract; so that one can say that »Kant findet einen 
vertragsunabhängigen Rechtsgrund für die Staatserrichtung.«5 »Contractus 
originarius non est principium fiendi (Errichtungsgrund) sed cognoscendi 
(Verwaltungsgrund) des Staats« (AA X I X , R 7956): it is »merely a 
supposition to explain the obligations of citizens and rulers, who are to behave 
'as if' it were real.«6 If the original contract is not a fact but an idea which 
necessarily stems from reason and conveys the consent of all to constitute 
themselves as civil association, their agreement to institute general laws; if, as 
it follows, the institution of laws does not require a factual consent of the 
people but has to fulfil the conditions under which these laws would have met 
the general consent: they have to be made as if they were made by people, for 
the people is the legislator, »summus imperans souverain«;7 if, consequently, 
the popular sovereignty is not a realistic description of people's action but a 
regulative idea, and is exercised by representatives of the people: then Kant's 
republicanism does not have much in common, moreover, it is rather at odds, 
with the tradition of civic humanism, its idea of politics and ideals of vivere 
politico 
The purpose of Kant's republic is not to pursue the common good, and salus 
publica (or populi) is not the supreme law. Its principles are freedom and 
justice. In Kant's philosophy, the common good is the status civilis itself: 
4 . Kersting, op. tit., p. 288, 291. 
5 . Ibid, ch. C. II (p. 218); Roger J. Sullivan, Immanuel Kant's Mora! Theory, CUP 1990, p. 239 
sq. 
6 . J. W. Gough, The Social Contract, A critical study of its development, Clarendon Press, 
Oxford 1936, p. 173. For a different assessment of the hypotethical character of Kant's 
»social contract« see Patrick Riley, Will and Political Legitimacy: A Critical Exposition of 
Social Contract Theory in Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel, Harvard University 
Press, Cambridge, MA./London 1982, Ch. 5. 
7 . »Der summus imperans ist immer das Volk, die einzelne Person des summi imperantis ist nur 
der Represaentant des Volks.« (AA, XXVII/2.2, 1382.) 
8 . For a succinct account of these ideas and ideals see Maurizio Viroli, »Machiavelli and the 
republican idea of politics«, in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. by Gisela Bock, Quentin 
Skinner and Maurizio Viroli, CUP 1990. 
118 Tomaž Mastna k 
freedom under general law which allows to every person to seek happiness in 
the way that seems best to him, provided that he does not violate the right of 
any other person to do the same.9 Kant's »political freedom« is related to that 
of classical republicanism in that that it consists in the participation of the 
people, that is, the entirety of citizens bound by general law, in the institution 
of the laws of civil community, for only those laws are just which are the 
expression of the general will; yet it differs from classical republicanism in that 
that it does not imply the compulsion of an actual vita activa, withering away 
the distinctions between legality and morality, state and society, public and 
private spheres, which Kant seeks to uphold (last but not least by envisaging a 
representative state10). 
The second a priori principle of status civilis (the equality of all members of 
the social union as subjects) excludes privileges and hereditary prerogatives as 
unlawful - any Vorrecht is rechtswidrig - and requires the general 
accessibility of all juridical and social positions.11 Such a view is in principle 
incompatible with the civic humanist juridical considerations of rank. The 
third principle of civil constitution, however, is a surprise. Firstly, because it is 
not the expected fraternité,12 and secondly, because it brings in an 
»unprocessed« core element of the political tradition which the first two 
principles have left behind. The idea that sibisufficientia is a necessary 
condition which qualifies a member of the commonwealth for citizenship ( WA 
XI, 150-1), links Kant to the classical republican conviction that material 
independence was the precondition of political virtue and competence and, 
therefore, citizenship. Kersting's argument that Kant related himself to this 
tradition thoughtlessly13 would imply that, when Kant did consequently think 
through the premises of his theory of law, his republicanism differed from the 
9 . Cf. WA XI, 145. In a note to § 89 of Achenwall's Iuris naturalipars posterior, Kant placed 
in opposition »salus publica« and »iustitia publica« (AA X I X , R 7413). To the same article 
of Iuris naturaii refers the following remark: »Nicht das princip der allgemeinen 
Glückseeligkeit sondern Freyheit nach allgemeinen Gesetzen macht das princip der 
Staatserrichtung und die Idee davon aus.« {Ibid., R 7955.) »Was ist der Zweck einer 
Republique? Einige sagen: die Glückseeligkeit, das ist aber so falsch, als es falsch ist, daß 
Gott die Menschen ihrer Glückseeligkeit wegen erschaffen habe. Der Zweck der Republique 
ist die Administration des Rechts. Nicht einzelner Glückseeligkeit, sondern der Zustand der 
öffentlichen Gerechtigkeit ist die Hauptsache dabei.« (AA XXVII/2.2, 1328). 
10. »Alle Regierungsform [...], die nicht repräsentativ ist, ist eigentlich eine Unform« etc. ( IVA 
XI, 207.) For Kurt Borries, Kant als Politiker. Zur Staats- und Gesellschaftslehre des 
Kritizismus, Neudruck der Ausgabe Leipzig 1928, Scientia Verlag, Alen 1973, p. 200, Kant's 
concept of representation is virtually identical with a concept of republicanism. 
11 . See WA XI, 146 sq. ZeF formulates this principle as <Abhängigkeit aller von einer einzigen 
gemeinsamen Gesetzgebung (ibid., 204). Cf. Immanuel Kants Menschenkunde oder 
philosophische Anthropologie, ed. Fr. Ch. Starke, Leipzig 1831, p. 372: Laws »[müssen] auf 
Alle gehen, für Alle gelten und von Allen gegeben werden können.« 
12 . This is understandable if fraternity is seen as Gesinnungsgemeinschaft - as a community 
modelled on or striving to become a société de pensée (see François Furet, Penser la 
Révolution française, Gallimard, Paris 1978, p. 271 sq.) - because Gesinnung« is what reigns 
in the status naturalis. 
13. Kersting, op. cit., p. 257. 
Kant eirenikös: republicanism. 119 
classical republicanism to the degree which showed up the limits of the older, 
civic humanist, tradition because it itself was already beyond it. 
If the very situating of the discussion of republicanism in the framework of the 
theory of law, this jurisprudential displacement, meant a major distantiation 
from classical republicanism, Kant nevertheless shared a number of concerns 
with that tradition. Central among them was the militia issue, that is, the 
question of the organizational form of armed forces and their place in civil 
constitution. The third preliminary article of the treatise of eternal peace 
states, as the leading principle, that »stehende Heere (miles perpetuus) sollen 
mit der Zeit ganz aufhören,« and indicates, as a solution preferable to the 
standing army, exercise of citizens in arms.14 
An authoritative and highly influential formulation of the classical republican 
view of military matters is Machiavelli's. »Good laws and good arms, the 
concern to recreate the links between the civilian and military spheres, to draw 
the military world and war back into the heart of political and civic life, to use 
military training to encourage civic virtue and patriotism; these were all 
messages that Machiavelli conveyed more clearly, more coherently than any of 
his contemporaries.«15 In Machiavelli's and, later, Machiavellian world, militia 
was inextricably connected with the cultivation of political virtu, and arms 
continued to be »the most potent symbol of a citizenship«16 well into Kant's 
time. Positions pro et contra militia were paradigmatically stated in the 
»Standing Army Controversy,« following the Peace of Ryswick, which has 
been characterized as »perhaps the most thorough single debate on forms of 
military organisation to occur in early modern Europe.«17 The importance of 
the controversy, its novelty, may be seen to lie in the fact that the standing 
army now represented an alternative to militia which could be argued for 
consistently18 and that, as much as the pro-militia opponents of the standing 
army tried to describe the latter in terms of corruption, its advocates 
14. »Ganz anders ist es mit der freiwilligen periodisch vorgenommenen Übung der Staatsbürger 
in Waffen bewandt, sich und ihr Vaterland dadurch gegen Angriffe von außen zu sichern.« 
(WA XI, 198.) »Keine stehende Armee (perpetuus miles) zu halten« was a »Mittel« for 
achieving »ewigen Frieden.« (AA XXIII , 155.) 
15 . Michael Mallet, »The theory and practice of warfare in Machiavelli's republic«, in 
Machiavelli and Republicanism, op. eil, p. 174. 
16. John Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue, John Donald Publishers 
Ltd., Edinburgh 1985, p. 224. For English Machiavellians' ideas on this issue, see J.G.A. 
Pocock, »Machiavelli, Harrington and English Political Ideologies in the Eighteenth 
Century«, in Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History, The 
University of Chicago Press, Chicago/London 1989, and The Machiavellian Moment: 
Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, Princeton University 
Press, Princeton N.J., 1975, Ch. 12, 13. 
17 . Robertson, op. cit., p. 15; cf. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, p. 423. For a summary of 
the controversy see Robertson, ibid., p. 26 sq.; Lois G. Schwoerer, »The Literature of the 
Standing Army Controversy, 1697-1699«, The Huntington Library Quarterly, 28 (1965), 3; 
Schwoerer, »No Standing Armies!« The Antiarmy Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England, 
The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London 1974, Ch. 8. 
18 . Michael Mallet, op. cit., p. 175; Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military 
innovation and the rise of the West, 1500-1800, CUP 1989. 
120 Tomaž Mastna k 
nevertheless succeeded in influencing the debate to the effect of unlocking the 
Polybian circle. 
This, however, is only one reason for considering Kant's ideas about war and 
peace against this background. The other is that, by doing so, we can trace his 
dialogue with the Scottish Enlightenment and see his views in the European 
intellectual context.19 With regard to the militia/standing army dilemma, the 
German context alone would not help much to improve our understanding 
because a glimpse at what was thought and taught shows that different options 
were on offer.20 
Kant's argument against the standing army was minimalist: he understood it as 
a device which generates war ( W A XI, 197); and reformist: standing armies 
ought to be abolished only gradually. This gradualism forms a contrast to the 
impatience of the anti-army writers of the »Standing Army Controversy,« and 
the minimalism expresses an even deeper dissimilarity between Kant and the 
Commonwealth-Militiamen. These did not argue against war but against the 
army - because they perceived it as an organizational form which alienated 
the military from the political community. For them, arms were »the only true 
Badges of Liberty.«21 They claimed that there should be »no difference 
between the Citizen, the Souldier, and the Husbandman« and that »Sword and 
Sovereignty« had to »march hand in hand.«22 »that Nation is surest to live in 
Peace, that is most capable of making War.«23 
19. Links between the »Standing Army Controversy« and the Scottish Enlightenment are 
discussed in Robertson, op. cit.; Robertson has also stressed the »European dimension« of 
the latter. On Kant's Lektüre, in this respect: Arthur Warda, Immanuel Kants Bücher, Verlag 
von Martin Breslauer, Berlin 1922, and his reprint of the Verzeichniß der Bücher des 
verstorbenen Professor Johann Friedrich Gensichen, wozu auch die demselben zugefallene 
Bücher des Professor Kant gehören etc., Königsberg [1808], Cf. Günter Gawlick/Lothar 
Kreimendahl, Hume in der deutschen Aufklärung. Umrisse einer Rezeptionsgeschichte, 
Fromman Holzbog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1987, especially Ch. 9; still of interest: August 
Oncken, Adam Smith und Immanuel Kant. Der Entwicklung und das Wechselverhältniss 
ihrer Lehren über Sitte, Statt und Wirtschaft, Duncker & Humbolt, Leipzig 1877; F.W. 
Schubert, Immanuel Kant und seine Stellung zur Politik in der letzten Hälfte des achtzehnten 
Jahrhunderts, Brockhaus, Leipzig 1838. 
2 0 . Eg., Johann Michael von Loen, Freye Bedancken Von der Verbesserung des Staats, in v. 
Loen, Der redliche Mann am Hofe, Faksimiledruck nach der Ausgabe 1742, ed. by Karl 
Reichert, J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1966, pp. 549-53, argued for a 
»National- oder Land-Miliz«; Johann August Schlettwein, Grundfeste der Staaten oder die 
politische Oekonomie, Gießen 1779, § 224, was »neutral«; Johann Heinrich Gottlob von 
Justi, Staatswirtschaft oder Systematische Abhandlung aller Oekonomischen und 
Cameralwissenschaften, die zur Regierung eines Landes erfordert werden, Leipzig 1758, 
Vol. I, §§ 60, 70, stressed that a state needed »ein wohl eingerichtetes und hinlängliches 
Kriegesheer.« 
2 1 . [Andrew Fletcher,] A Discourse of Government with Relation to Militia's, Edinburgh 1698, 
p. 47. 
2 2 . [Walter Moyle and John Trenchard,] An Argument, Shewing, that a standing Army is 
inconsistent with a Free Government, and absolutely destructive to the Constitution of the 
English Monarchy, London 1697, pp. 20, 7. Cf. [John Toland,] The Militia Reform'd, or an 
Easy Scheme of Furnishing England with a Constant Land-force, capable to prevent or to 
subdue any Forein Power; and to maintain perpetual Quiet at Home, without endangering 
the Public'k Liberty, London [1698], p. 72. 
2 3 . Moyle/Trenchard, op. cit., p. 12. 
Kant eirenikös: republicanism. 121 
Kant's maxime - the veto declared by the moral-practical reason - was »Es 
soll kein Krieg sein« ( WA VIII, 478). He was opposed to the standing army 
because he was opposed to war, and recognized that the permanent danger of 
war was imminent to the existence of standing armies. They represented, and 
created, an armed peace: a state prone to war the dynamics of which he 
described as an arms race.24 For Kant, militia was an alternative to the army 
not because he thought that arms would, »n this way, come into the right 
hands but because he believed that citizens (or people), if they were to make 
the decision, were less likely to decide to go to war because they themselves 
would have to finance it, fight it and suffer all the consequences.(IVA XI, 205 
sq. ct. 170.) Another reason for his advocating the periodic exercises of 
citizens in arms was that he understood this to be voluntary, free, action while 
standing armies seemed to imply that people are hired to serve »als bloßen 
Maschinen und Werkzeuge in der Hand eines anderen,« and are used to kill or 
be killed, and such an instrumentalization is incompatible with the categorical 
imperative^ WAXl, 197-8.) If the Commonwealthmen decried the standing 
army as incompatible with the excellency of a free state, Kant argued against it 
because he perceived it as begetting war which contradicts any state, which 
negates the status civilis as such, the very condition of the possibility of 
freedom. 
Kant's concern with the public debt and, more generally, commerce was a key 
issue which linked him to contemporary Scottish debates on militia. He called 
the public debt «die sinnreiche Erfindung eines handeltreibenden Volks in 
diesem Jahrhundert« and clearly recognized it as a device invented to finance 
war. Having had in mind that wars in his time were becoming more numerous 
and expensive (the latter due to the military modernization) he mordantly 
observed that periods of peace were becoming too short to supply the raising 
sums of money needed for a next war, so that in order to gert out of the impass 
the (English) ingenuity invented public debts. ( W A XI, 170.) The credit 
system, as Kant saw it, was »entgegenwirkende Maschine der Machte gegen 
einander« and, as such, »eine gefährliche Geldmacht, nämlich ein Schatz zum 
Kriegsführen.« What it brought about was the »Leichtigkeit Krieg zu führen« 
which made it (together with the eagerness of those in power to make war) 
»ein großes Hindernis des ewigen Friedens.«25 However, as ingenious an 
2 4 . WA XI, 197, 42, 98. The necessity to be at any time prepared for war is a characteristic 
feature of the stale of nature: »Im Zustande des Friedens bin ich sicher durch mein Recht. 
Im natürlichen durch nichts als meine Gewalt; ich muß iederzeit in der Kriegsrüstung seyn 
[.-].« (AA X I X , R 7646.) 
2 5 . WA XI, 198. The description of credit as »engine« was used already by Davenant, for whom 
»the mechanism of public debt creation was not merely the financial base of a standing 
army; it was a virtual financial equivalent to one.« (Istvan Hont, »Free trade and the 
economic limits to national politics: neo-Machiavellian political economy reconsidered«, in 
John Dunn, ed., The economic limits to modern politics, CUP 1990, p. 98 sq.) For the 
historical background: John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English 
State 1688-1783, Unwin and Hyman, London 1989. 
122 Tomaž Mastna k 
invention public credit might have been, it was a self-destructive one, and 
Kant believed that this was bound to reduce war waging states to 
powerlessness. ( WA XI , 170. The expected form of this inescapable 
self-destruction was state bancruptca which »manche andere Staaten 
unverschuldet in den Schaden mit verwickeln muß, welches eine öffentliche 
Läsion der letzeren sein würde.« ( WA XI , 199.) This was just another reason 
for Kant's conviction that, in the interest of international peace, public credit 
was not to be allowed to grow - a reason added to the recognition that the 
credit was not used »zum Behuf der Landesökonomie,« that it originated in 
military needs and interests and that its purpose was the financing of war. 
It is true that Hume called for the destruction of public credit - in a phrase 
reminiscent of Moyle's and Trenchard's argument against the standing army26 
- in the interest of the nation while Kant had primarily in mind the relations 
between nations, yet what concerned Kant in the fourth preliminary article of 
ZcF was also Hume's problématique, and the one which occupied even his 
»dying thoughts.«27 Moreover, Hume was well aware of the international 
dimension of the problem. Istvan Hont has argued that Hume in his essay »Of 
Public Credit« meditated on the links between the fiscal necessities of national 
security and the social dislocations produced by debt finance. Suggesting a 
revision of Pocock's interpretation of the essay Hont has stressed that Hume's 
ambivalence with regard to public debt »is not the product of a vision of 
warring forces within commercial society. Rather, the scourge came from the 
conjunction of commercial society and international power politics.« 
Consequently, the true antithesis to the danger of public debt was »a durable 
peace, where public debt ceased to exist while commerce expanded.«28 
What underlies this argument is the belief which is at the core of the 
self-understanding of commercial society: that commerce is the opposite of (or 
the alternative to) war. The image of commerce as a - if not the - pacific 
force had become, by the time Kant thought of peace, a commonplace which 
he did not problematize. Commerce, he believed, promoted liberty (AA 
XXIII , 174), and he agreed with the optimistic spirit of the age that »[e]s ist 
der Handelsgeist, der mit dem Kriege nicht zusammen bestehen kann, und der 
früher oder später sich jedes Volks bemächtigt« ( WA XI, 226). Paradoxically, 
it was this faith in the progressing prevalence of commercial spirit as a spirit 
incompatible with war which worried Kant's enlightened Scottish 
2 6 . [...] either the nation must destroy public credit, or public credit will destroy the nation.« 
David Hume, Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed. by E. F. Miller, Liberty Classics, 
Indianapolis 1987, p. 360-1; Moyle/Trenchard, op. cit., p. 4: »[...] the Constitution must either 
break the Army, or the Army will destroy the Constitution.« 
2 7 . J.G.A. Pocock, »Hume and the American Revolution: The dying thoughts of a North 
Briton«, in Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly 
in the Eighteenth Century, CUP 1985. 
2 8 . Istvan Hont, »The Rhapsody of Public Debt: David Hume and Voluntary State Bankruptcy«, 
ms. 
Kant eirenikós: republicanism.. 123 
contemporaries. What Kant shared with them was the conceiving of commerce 
as civilizing force and the comprehension that this civilizing process surpassed 
the forms of political community characteristic of the past. For Kant, this 
simply meant leaving behind a »Regierung von alten Zeiten« (»Lehnwesen«) 
which »fast gänzlich auf den Krieg angelegt war« ( W A VIII, 450). Morally 
problematic, for him, was that feudal world of privileges; for Scottish 
illuminati, the problem was moral transformation caused by commerce. 
In their view, the growth of commercial society made the higher ranks 
unmanly and mentally mutilated the lower, and their adherence to militia was 
a moral reaction. Militia, they believed, would preserve and cultivate martial 
virtues without which they could not conceive of citizenship Martial spirit was 
the crystallization of the virtues of vivcrc politico. In order to counteract ill 
effects of commerce, this spirit had to be preserved. Adam Ferguson, a key 
figure among the Moderate literati, wished to limit the expansion of commerce 
in society by maintaining a clear distinction between the commercial and the 
political spheres, so that the lower orders would be sacrificed to the production 
of wealth while the higher would actively pursue republican virtue.29 Contrary 
to this, Adam Smith, envisaged »some kind of military training along ancient 
lines« as a compulsory part of public education for the common people in 
order to introduce them to the political life of society.30 He conceptualized the 
extension of political community imminent to the progress of commercial 
society as the universalization of the traditional civic concept of armed 
citizenship.31 Unexpectedly, perhaps, the political existence of commercial 
society was to be supported by the martial spirit which was believed to be 
incompatible with the commercial spirit: in the conservative version, by the 
preservation of a martially spirited high society, and in the progressive, by the 
militarization of society. 
Kant, like Smith or any enlightened spirit, believed in education, yet a military 
education for citizenship could hardly be seen as being compatible with his 
political philosophy. The figure of an army officer and the picture of military 
exercise were the first images of the frustrated Enlightenment to have come to 
his mind when he thought of instances where the public use of reason, the 
defining characteristic of the Aufklärung, was forbidden. (WA XI,55.) 
Military virtues dit not appeal to Kant. Valor (and the whole age of chivalry) 
2 9 . See An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), ed. Duncan Forbes, The University 
Press, Edinburgh 1966, part VI; Forbes, »Introduction«, ibid., p. xxxvi; Robertson, op. cii, pp. 
88 sq., 201 sq. 
30 . On military themes in Smith's work: Donald Winch, Adam Smith's Politics. An essay in 
historiographic revision, CUP 1978, Ch. 5, Robertson, op. cit., p. 212 sq; on military 
education: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. by R. H. 
Campbell, A. S. Skinner and W. B. Todd, Liberty Classics, Indianapolis 1981, V.i.f.58-61; 
Winch, ibid\ p. 118; Robertson, ibid., p. 216. 
31 . Robertson, ibid., p. 223-5. 
124 Tomaž Mastna k 
was, for him, simply savagery.32 a matter of taste. Yet if this was a matter of 
taste, there also were »objective,« that is, »theoretical,« reasons for discarding 
military virtues: they conflicted with Kant's concept of morality and liberty. 
Liberty, in his philosophy, was individual and juridical and morality was 
interchangeable with Rechtslehre. As opposed to this, military spirit as the 
guard of morality was not a means to oust war; it focused on the sal us populi; 
and implied the positive concept of liberty. ZeFwas alien to moral concerns of 
Scottish illuminati: »Es ist hier nicht die rede von Beförderung der Sittlichkeit 
nicht einmal der Glückseeligkeit sondern blos den Krieg zu verbannen.« ( A A 
XXIII , 162.) 
Kant's description of commercial spirit as »ungesellig« ( W A XII, 664) fits well 
into the framework of his treatise of peace. Given the famous formulation of 
the »ungesellige Geselligkeit der Menschen« as the antagonism that moves the 
world history towards the creation of a perfect civil constitution (cf. WA XI, 
37), commerce can be understood as a historical force, as an agens in a 
teleological but still realistic view of conflict ridden history. Free from the 
corruption model, Kant, on the one hand, did not have to worry about the 
effects of the growth of commerce on the public spirit and social manners and 
could, in this respect, wholeheartedly accept the Handelsgeist. On the other 
hand, he did not have to suspend another aspect of commercial reality which 
seems to have been much less alarming to the enlightened Scottish late 
republicans. Half a century after the imposed Union with England, they seem 
to have accommodated their views to the higher good of their new country and 
recognized the standing army as useful - if only employed in colonies.33 
Commerce, it was understood, needed military backing. Commercial spirit not 
only was not incompatible with war: it became a source of wars. 
Kant was intensely concerned with how commercial societies behaved to each 
other and, especially, with how the »handeltreibende Staaten unseres 
Weltteils« treated the rest of the world. He dealt with the international 
behaviour of the commercial nations in the third definitive article of ZeF, 
under the heading of »hospitality.« He defined this as »das Recht eines 
Fremdlings, seiner Ankunft auf dem Boden eines anderen wegen, von diesem 
nicht feindselig behandelt zu werden. Dieser kann ihn abweisen, wenn es ohne 
32 . WA XI, 222. »Der Krieg ist eine Art von Rohigkeit Unbezogenheit Barbarism wie unter 
Wilden statt der Argumente Schläge.« (AA XXIII , 162.) »Der rohe Mensch hält jeden 
Fremde für seinen Feind. Daher ist bei den Wilden jener der Vornehmste, der der Tapferste 
ist,« lectured Kant and added that this is a state of fear. {Menschenkunde, 368; cf. WA VIII, 
681.) Ernst Katzer, »Kant und Krieg«, Kantstudien, X X (1915), p. 150 sq., ascribed much 
prominence to opposite views presenting war as a »Kulturmittel.« Cf. H. Vaihinger, »Eine 
französische Kontroverse über Kants Ansicht vom Kriege. Auch ein Wort zur 
Friedenskonferenz«, Kantstudien, IV (1900), p. 59; F. Staudinger, »Kants Traktat: Zum 
ewigen Frieden. Ein Jubiläums- Epilog«, Kantstudien, I (1897), especially his discussion of 
Pfleiderer's Die Idee des ewigen Friedens. 
33 . Cf. Robertson, op. cit., p. 81-2. 
Kant eirenikós: republicanism.. 125 
seinen Untergang geschehen kann; so lange er aber auf seinem Platz sich 
friedlich verhält, ihm nicht feindlich begegnen.« (WA XI, 213.) The 
background to the discussion, the idea of the common property of the earth, 
was conventional, yet Kant's observations and conclusions were not. He 
compared the doings of the commercial European nations overseas to the 
brigandage of Barbaresque pirates (the early modern symbol of outlawry) and 
condemned these doings in strong terms: »[D]ie Ungerechtigkeit, die sie in 
dem Besuche fremder Länder und Völker (welches ihnen mit dem Erobern 
derselben für einerlei gilt) beweisen, [geht] bis zum Erschrecken weit. 
Amerika, die Negerländer, die Gewürzinseln, das Kap etc. waren, bei ihrer 
Entdeckung, für sie Länder, die keinem angehörten; denn die Einwohner 
rechneten sie für nichts.« (Ibid., 214-5.) What was established was 
»allergrausamste und ausgedachteste Sklaverei« (Ibid., 216), and wherever 
Europeans had landed war broke out. The map of the commercial expansion 
was actually a map of new armed conflicts. Kant certainly saw it this way. 
»Die Länder von Amerika waren kaum entdeckt als sie nicht allein durch 
abgedrungene oder erschlichene Niederlassung sondern selbst die Einwohner 
theils als herrenloses Gut zu Sklaven gemacht oder auch aus ihren Sitzen 
verdrängt und durch innere Kriege aufgerieben worden wodurch denn den 
handeltreibenden Einwohnern eine Macht und auch vielfältiger neuer Anlas 
erwuchs sich innerlich aus Neid und Besorgnis des Übergewichts einestheils in 
vielfältig langen Kriegen unglücklich zu machen.« (AA XXIII , 174.) In East 
Indies, Europeans brought in, »unter dem Vorwande bloß beabsichtigter 
Handelsniederlagen, fremde Kriegsvölker hinein, mit ihnen aber 
Unterdrückung der Eingebornen, Aufwiegelung der verschiedenen Staaten 
desselben zu weit ausgebreiteten Kriegen, Hungersnot, Aufruhr, Treulosigkeit, 
und wie die Litanei aller Übel, die das manschliche Geschlecht drücken, 
weiter lauten mag.« ( W A XI, 215.) In West Indies, Kant observed, 
economically unsuccessful trading companies switched to war business and 
trained seamen, clearly »auf die Kriege gerechnet,« which made even more 
plausible his prediction that wars which Europeans had started all over the 
world will finally come back home to Europe.34 
I wish to point out that Kant must have been aware of the difficulties of 
resting the case of durable world peace on commerce and commercial spirit 
alone.35 Such an argument could be made in the framework of his 
34 . IVA XI , 216; A A XXIII , 174. The threat of war to Europe was seen by Kant as an indirect 
consequence of the Negerhandel, which was conducted by Europeans and was in itself a 
gross violation of the law of humanity. (AA, XXIII , 174-5.) »Ein Funke der Verletzung des 
Menschenrechts auch in einem anderen Welttheil gefallen nach der Brennbarkeit des Stoffs 
der Herrschsucht in der menschlichen Natur vornemlich Häupter die Flamme des Krieges 
leicht bis zu der Gegend verbreitet wo er seinen Ursprung genommen.« (Ibid., 175.) For 
Kant's view of the interconnectedness of the peoples of the world, that »die 
Rechtsverletzung an einem Platz der Erde an allen gefühlt wird,« see WA XI, 216. 
35 . That Kant emphasized the pacifying effects of world trade is, as a rule, contended in the 
liberal pacifist reading of Kant. Susan Meld Schell, The Rights of Reason: A study of Kant's 
126 Tomaž Mastna k 
transcendental view of history which allowed even wars to be seen as 
antagonistic forces working for the ultimate future pacific state. It is true that 
Kant's philosophy of history is an integral moment of his argument for peace, 
the guarantee of the eternal peace; yet because it makes sense of war it seems 
to be in a tense relationship with the imperative that there should be no war. 
The fact is, however, that, from the formal point of view, commerce does not 
figure as an article of peace in ZeF, except negatively: as the ban on national 
debt, and as a strategem of Nature: a sort of Mitläufer of the cosmopolitan 
law. 
As a strategem of Nature, commerce itself does not imply the ending of the 
state of nature which is »ein Zustand des Krieges.« ( WA XI , 203.) Peace, 
which has to be made (ibid.), is conceivable, not only in a Rechtszustand, but 
as a Rechtszustand. This is why the first definitive article of Z e F declares that 
the civil constitution of any state ought to be republican. This alone, however, 
does not yet create a state of peace because states, even if republican and 
therefore (the faith Kant shared with the civic tradition) »ihrer Natur nach 
zum ewigen Frieden geneigt« ( WA XI, 211), do not yet spontaneously live in 
peace: states coexist in a statu naturalis Here, too, peace has to be made, and 
it can only be made by creating a Rechtszustand. Peace, therefore, cannot be 
conceived outside the framework of the law of nations. Republican 
constitution of a nation is a necessary, yet not a sufficient, condition of peace; 
for peace depends also on the relations between nations: peace is, ultimately, 
an international problem and, primarily, a problem of national civil 
constitution. Kant's achivement was, of course, not in considering peace an 
international problem, for many had done that before; but in the way he 
conceptualized peace as an international problem in a jurisprudential 
framework. 
Kant had no illusions about the power of what Bentham, in an unpublished 
paper a few years earlier, was the first to call international law. He observed 
that the codex formulated by Grotius, Pufendorf, Vattel and some others had 
»nicht die mindeste gesetzliche Kraft« (and also could not have it because 
philosophy and politics, University of Toronto Press, Toronto/Buffalo/London 1980, p. 177, 
differs from this approach in adding that Kant »rejects as moral sophistry the (Lockean) 
contention that people who refuse to 'do business' may be justly colonized or enslaved. 
Commerce cannot furnish an excuse to deny the personality which juridically grounds it.« 
Murray Forsyth, Unions of States. The Theory and Practice of Confederation, Leicester 
University Press/Holmes & Meier Publishers Inc., New York 1981, p. 102, points out that 
Kant's jus cosmopoliticum implies »the freedom to trade, rather than the freedom of trade,« 
in which Kant parts with the nineteenth-century liberals. On how much war (and peace) 
there actually was in the economic thinking, see (for the discussed period) Edmond 
Silberner, La guerre dans la pensée économique du XVI' au XVIII' siècle, Librairie du 
Recueil Sirey, Paris 1939. 
36 . »Das Verhältniß der Staaten gegen einander ist das Verhältniß der Wilden.« »Dies zeigt aber 
offenbar von einer noch vorhandenen Barbarei.« (Menschenkunde; 371.) »Wir sind in 
Ansehung des Völkerrechts noch barbaren.« ( A A X V , R1453.) 
Kant eirenikós: republicanism.. 127 
»Staaten als solche nicht unter einem gemeinschaftlichen äußeren Zwange 
stehen«,) and that it had been, even worse than that, often used for the 
justification of wars while there had been no cases »daß jemals ein Staat durch 
mit Zeugnissen so wichtiger Männer bewaffnete Argumente wäre bewogen 
worden, von seinem Vorhaben [to start a war] abzustehen.« However, the 
mere fact that »das Wort Recht aus der Kriegspolitik noch nicht als pedantisch 
ganz hat verwiesen werden können, und sich noch kein Staat erkühnet hat, 
sich für die letztere Meinung öffentlich zu erklären,« was interpreted by Kant 
as a homage which states paid to the Rechtsbegriff, and this was understood as 
a proof »daß eine noch größere, ob zwar zur Zeit schlummernde, moralische 
Anlage im Menschen anzutreffen sei, über das böse Prinzip in ihm [...] doch 
einmal Meister zu werden.«" From a less (teleologically) anthropological point 
of view, the respect shown to the notion of, or even the word, Right could be 
seen as the evidence for the authority of reason which »vom Throne der 
höchsten moralisch gesetzgebenden Gewalt herab, den Krieg als Rechtsgang 
schlechterdings verdammt, den Fridenzustand dagegen zur unmittelbaren 
Pflicht macht.« ( WA XI, 211.) 
When Kant explains the second definitive article on the eternal peace: »Das 
Völkerrecht soll auf einen Föderalism freier Staaten gegründet sein« ( WA XI, 
208), he uses the juridical construct of the state of nature to describe relations 
between states in the absence of external general laws yet he is well aware that 
the analogy ends as soon one reflects upon departing from the state of nature, 
that is, entering into the status civilis.™ States, that is, peoples constituting 
different states, cannot enter, in order to have their rights secured, into a 
Völkerstaat, for this would contradict the basic premise which was to secure 
rights of peoples, because in one state - given that »ein jeder Staat das 
Verhältnis eines Oberen (Gesetzgebenden) zu einem Unteren (Gehorchenden, 
nämlich dem Volk) enthält« - they would form one people and would cease to 
exist as peoples. ( WA XI , 209.) This is such an obvious logical conclusion that 
it may look like a philosophizing unworthy of a serious thinker. However, the 
premises of Kant's inference were either logical or obvious. He was making a 
political argument which was, in those times, not unique (yet still less 
dominant or hegemonic) and represented the counterpoint to the conceptual 
solution by Christian Wolff, whom Voltaire called »maître à penser de 
l'Allemagne.«39 
37 . WA XI, 210; on the »moralische Anlage« cf. Der Streit der Fakultäten, Part II. 
3 8 . The limits of the analogy are stressed by Wolfgang G. Bayerer, »Das Königsberger 
Schlußblatt des Entwurfs 'Zum ewigen Frieden'«, Kantstudien, L X X I X (1988), p. 298. Leslie 
A. Mulholland, »Kant on War and International Justice«, Kantstudien, L X X V I I I (1987), is 
less strict on this issue. 
3 9 . Cf. Marcel Thomann, »Christian Wolff«, in Michael Stolleis, ed., Staatsdenker im 17. und 18. 
Jahrhundert: Reichspublizistik, Politik, Naturrecht, Alfred Metzner Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 
1977, p. 248. 
128 Tomaž Mastna k 
In social theory, Wolff was a contractarian. He argued that all men are by 
nature equal and free, so that society can only be formed by the submission of 
individuals under one commanding will because, by nature, no individual can 
be subjected to another individual. Consequently, every society rests on an 
express or tacit contract.40 These principles explain the creation of the state, as 
well, and by analogy Wolff construed one of his central concepts, the civitas 
maxima: the state into which nations have combined and of which they are 
citizens.41 From this notion he deduced the voluntary law of nations, and jus 
gentium was thus, actually, the law of the civitas maxima, the civil law of 
»cette grante République.«42 The nations which have combined into such a 
civitas maxima and »bound themselves to the whole« were in the same relation 
to the universal state and its »rector« as individuals were to the nation-state. 
On the basis of a presumed consent (Wolff did not hide that civitas maxima 
was »a kind of democratic form of government« they have divested themselves 
of sovereignty which »belongs to the whole as against the individual nations.«43 
Wolff's jus gentium belongs to the tradition of natural jurisprudence and 
international law (as much as he claimed the superiority of his own method 
over that of Grotius and Pufendorf); the civitas maxima, however, links Wolff 
to another context, that of »société des nations,«** which has only by a false 
impression been styled internationalist and which, in its method and strategy, 
negates the law of nations. What constitutes the identity of the law of nations 
is the refusal to define it as the civil law of an entity aiming at, or modeled on, 
the universal empire,45 that is, the rejection of the analogy between the civil 
law and the law of nations.46 This made it possible, or necessary, to recognize 
the inalienable sovereignty of nations (states) as subjects of the law of nations. 
40 . Cf. ibid., and Otfried Nippold, »Einleitung«, in Christian Wolft, Jus gentium methodo 
scientifica pertractatum, The Classics of International Law, The Clarendon Press/Humphrey 
Milford, London 1934, Vol. I, p. xxxv-xxxvi. 
4 1 . Wolff, Jus gentium, Prolegomena, §§ 9-10. 
42 . Emmerich de Vattel, Le Droit des Gens ou principes de la Loi Naturelle, appliqués à la 
conduite & aux affaires des Nations & des Souverains, The Carnegie Institution of 
Washington, Washington 1916, Preface, p. xvii. 
4 3 . Wolff, op. cit., Prol., § 19; in »rector« § 21. 
44 . Marcellus Thomann, »Introduction«, in Christiani Wolfii Jus gentium, Christian Wolff, 
Gesamme/te Werke, Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim/New York 1972, II. Abt., Bd. 25, p. 
xxxv-xxxvi. 
45 . As Thomann, ibid., p. xxxviii, notes, Wolff qualified civitas maxima as »universal empire.« 
46 . Earlier interpreters »have gone astray in introducing into this subject [law of nations] a bald 
and often inappropriate discussion of civil law,« wrote Gentili (De iure belli tibri très, 
Clarendon Press, Oxford/Humphrey Milford, London 1933, I 1) whom Coleman Phillipson 
(«Introduction«, op. citv Vol. II, p. 18a, 20a, cf. 50a sq.) calls »the first great writer on 
modern international law, the first clearly to define its subject matter,« because he rejected 
the methods of the »civilians« who considered international law as being in large measure an 
application or extension of the civil law. Cf. Diego Panizza, Alberico Gentili, giurista 
ideologo nell'Inghilterra elisabettiana, Padova 1981, Ch. Ill, IV. 
Kant eirenikós: republicanism.. 129 
Gentili, applying his methodological caesura to jus belli, insisted on the 
definition of war as an armed contest between sovereign public authorities 
who have »a state, a senate, a treasury, united and harmonious citizens, and 
some basis for a treaty of peace.« In his view, wars originate in necessity which 
»arises because there cannot be judicial processes between supreme sovereigns 
or free peoples unless they themselves consent, since they acknowledge no 
judge or superior.«47 
Not all theorists of jus gentium followed Gentili in making a sharp distinction 
between civil and international law, so that Wolff with the civitas maxima was 
all but a late survivor of an eclipsed tradition. There were critics of Wolff's 
universal state in Germany;48 yet Kant seems to have followed Vattel who 
actually thought of himself as a popularizer of the illegible Wolff but asserted, 
in a crucial point, that »je ne reconnois point d'autre Société naturelle entre 
les Nations, que celle-là même que la Nature a établie entre tous les hommes. 
Il est de l'essence de toute Société Civile (Civitatis) que chaque membre ait 
cédé une partie de ses droits au Corps de la Société, & qu'il y ait une Autorité 
capable de commander à tous les membres, de leur donner des Loix, de 
contraindre ceux qui refuseroient d'obéir. On ne peut rien concevoir, ni rien 
supposer de semblable entre les Nations.«49 He was definitive that the subject 
of the law of nations, and its subjects, are sovereign states. 
These states are, for Kant, the actors of war and peace. Because the way they, 
in the absence of an external tribunal, pursue their right (that is, by war) is 
destructive of right and neither victory nor peace treaty can bring peace but 
only end a given war while the state of war continues to exist; because states 
(according to the law of nations) cannot be expected to act like the natural 
law expects individuals to act, requring that they leave the state of lawlessness, 
for states, as states, already have an internal juridical constitution; and because 
reason unconditionally condemns war and demands peace (which can only be 
created and secured by a treaty between peoples): »so muß es einen Bund von 
besonderer Art geben, den man den Freidensbund (foedus pacificum) nennen 
kann« and which differs from pactum pads in that that it would terminate the 
state of war, not just a war. ( WA XI , 210-1; cf. A A XXIII , 167-8.) 
4 7 . Gentili, op. cit., I 2-4. 
4 8 . Cf. Nippold, op. cit., p. xlv-xlix. 
4 9 . Vattel, op. cit., Preface, p. xviii. Kant had a copy of the German translation of Vattel's book 
in his library and told to his students that, as to jus gentium, »das beste Buch hievon 
nachzulesen ist Vattels.« (AA XXVII.2,2, 1392.) He agreed with the Swiss in the rejection of 
the »barbarities« in the conduct of war, and categorically rejected »dishonourable 
strategema« which made it impossible to conclude peace (because they cause the loss of any 
trust in the enemy) and lead into a war of extermination: »Es soll sich kein Staat im Kriege 
mit einem anderen solche Feindseligkeiten erlauben, welche das wechselseitige Zutrauen im 
künftigen Frieden unmöglich machen müssen: als da sind, Anstellung der Meuchelmörder 
(percussores), Giftmischer (venefici), Brechung der Kapitulation, Anstiftung des Verrats 
(perduellio) in dem bekriegten Staat etc.« ( WA XI, 200.) Wolff, on the contrary, argued that, 
in war, strategema can consist both in force and deceit, and allowed dolus, use of poisons 
percussores and exploratores (Jus gentium, §§ 857, 877, 878, 882, 884). 
130 Tomaž Mastna k 
The sole purpose of this foedus pads is to preserve and guarantee freedom of 
each state that has entered the treaty, to preserve peace among these states, 
without instituting public laws (that is, a supreme authority, or an arbiter) to 
the authority of which they would have to submit.50 The peace keeping rests on 
a purely negative treaty (foedus).'1 What Kant calls »der freie Föderalism« is a 
»Surrogat des bürgerlichen Gesellschaftbundes,« because only such a substitute 
for a positive union is compatible with the notion of the law of nations - if the 
notion is to make any sense. ( W A XI, 212.) »Ein solcher Föderalism setzt [...] 
freye Staaten als solche voraus und ist blos negative nämlich die Absicht nur 
den Krieg abzuhalten und zugleich die Verschmeltzung eines Staats mit dem 
andern.«(AA XXIII, 168.) Such a (negative) treaty between sovereign and 
separate states is »das syntetische Princip der äußern Freyheit der Staaten« 
(ibid.), and the law of nations which is not devoid of meaning can only be 
thought of as a »foedus pacificum oder pacis.« (AA XXIII, 169.) It is 
Völkerrecht which keeps out Völkerstaat, jus gentium which vetoes civitas 
gentium. Common sense would see a »society of nations,« an »universal state« 
which would gradually encompass all peoples on the earth and make them 
obey its laws, the solution for a state in which states are perpetualy engaged in 
wars with one another. The idea of the law of nations, however, rejects such a 
solution and Kant had to conclude: »so kann an die Stelle der positiven Idee 
einer Weltrepublik (wenn nicht alles verloren werden soll) nur das negative 
Surrogat eines den Krieg abwehrenden, bestehenden, und sich immer 
ausbreitenden Bundes den Strom der rechtscheuenden, feindseligen Neigungen 
aufhalten, doch mit beständiger Gefahr ihres Ausbruchs.« ( W A XI, 212-3; cf. 
AA XXIII, 169.) 
There is a tinge of resignation to be felt in Kant's conclusion yet there is no 
evidence whatsoever for the assertion that »Kant saw quite clearly that there is 
only one way in which war between independent nations can be prevented; 
and that is by nations ceasing to be independent.«52 This is indeed Kant turned 
upside down. It is not only an imputation, to Kant, of ideas he did not hold but 
also a dispacement of his argument. If what was meant by the ceasing of 
nations to be independent was their incorporation into a kind of universal 
state, one can agree with Hinsley that Kant rejected such a »political 
federation« as impracticable, undesirable and irrelevant to the problem.53 The 
idea was impracticable because sovereign states »nicht wollen« such an union 
(WA XI, 212); undesirable, because it would lead to anarchy through 
50 . »[...] so muß es einen Bund unter Staaten geben der lediglich auf die wechselseitige Erhaltung 
des Friedens untereinander gestellt ist.« (AA XXIII , 167; cf. WA XI, 211.) 
5 1 . »Die Friedenserhaltung auch einen blos negativen Vertrag enthält und nicht eine positive 
Verbindung wie die bürgerliche Verfassung erfordert.« (AA XXIII , 168.) 
5 2 . David. G. Ritchie, Studies in Political and Social Ethics, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd., 
London/New York 1902, p. 169. 
53 . F. H. Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace. Theory and Practice in the History of 
Relations between States, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1963, p. 79. 
Kant eirenikós: republicanism.. 131 
despotism;54 and irrelevant to the problem of producing peace between nations 
precisely because a civitas gentium negates nations: and nations (states) were 
for Kant the prime condition of peace, they were peace settlements by 
definition because they represented status civilis as opposed to the warlike 
status naturalis. International peace was needed in order to preserve civil peace 
- in order to maintain conditions in which peace could be fostered and which 
in war would be destroyed - not to create it. And international peace could 
only be established between nations, and concieved of in the framework of the 
law of nations. For Kant, the eternal peace was »das letzte Ziel des ganzen 
Völkerrechts.«55 From this point of view, Kant's free federalism, the 
federalism of free states, is indeed to be understood as an attempt to develop 
international law,56 not as state (or empire) building. Small wonder that more 
than one school of international relations and international law has laid claim 
on Kant.57 
The claim, however, that Kant thought that the independence of nations has 
to be withered away if wars between nations were to be prevented is a 
profession de foi, not a misunderstanding, and at the same time an expression 
of the desire to have Kant in the congregation. Why the irenic brethern should 
wish to have Kant in their ranks is at the same time easy and difficult to 
understand. Easy, because Kant spoke of peace, and difficult, because his idea 
of peace differed from the main stream irenic tradition. There may be a broad 
consensus that peace is desirable, yet there is no consensual idea about peace 
and how to achieve it. But because irenists have substituted the desirability of 
peace for clear ideas, thinking about peace has consequently become of lesser 
importance and great thinkers have become easy to deal with. So it has often 
happened that Kant, for instance, not only became Saint-Pierre's equal but 
also his follower. Yet this is side-tracks the argument. There are deep 
structural differences between Kant and European irenism. 
54 . »Die Idee des Völkerrechts setzt die Absonderung vieler von einander unabhängiger 
benachbarten Staaten voraus, und, obgleich ein solcher Zustand an sich schon ein Zustand 
des Krieges ist [...]: so ist doch selbst dieser, nach der Vernunftidee, besser als die 
Zusammenschmelzung derselben, durch eine die andere überwachsende, und in eine 
Universalmonarchie übergehende Macht; weil die Gesetze mit dem vergrößten Umfange der 
Regierung immer mehr an ihrem Nachdruck einbüßen, und in ein seelenloser Despotism, 
nachdem er die Keime des Guten ausgerottet hat, zuletzt doch in Anarchie verfällt.« (WA 
XI, 225; cf. A A XXIII , 171; WA VIII, 682.) 
5 5 . WA VIII, 474. Janine Chanteur, De la guerre à la paix, PUF, Paris 1989,p. 209, seems to 
underestimate this point and argues that Kant »rompt avec cette vision des choses,« that is, 
with the vision of Jus gentium authors who »n'ont pas pour finalité l'instauration définitive 
de la paix.« In more than fifty pages she has dedicated to Kant's philosophy of peace, only 
one paragraph deals with the second definitive article of ZeF. 
5 6 . Hinsley, op. cit., p. 69: Kant used »such phrases as 'federation' and 'a union of states' for the 
rule of law between states.« This is a very clear definition of Kant's problem; unfortunately 
it confounds Kant's Rechtsstaatlichkeit with the »rule of law.« (On the difference: Kersting, 
op. cit., p. 286.) 
5 7 . Cf. Terry Nardin and David R. Mapel, eds., Traditions of International Ethics, CUP 1992. 
132 Tomaž Mastna k 
Much of the peace politics which hoped to have some practical effect was 
immersed in power politics and to a large degree spiritually intertwined peace 
and the logic of unpacific power. It accepted, as the starting point, the 
existence of a number of sovereign states and tried to define ways in which 
they could coexist peacefully. There was one condition under which the 
peaceful coexistence of European states was imaginable, and that was that 
none of them was allowed to be too strong, so that it could endanger the 
existence of others. In order to counteract an »exorbitant power« (striving to 
establish a monarchia universalis) smaller states had to form alliances, and the 
concept that provided the rationale was the concept of balance of power. The 
balance of power pacific politics actually dissolved into a combinatory power 
calculus, failing to reliably determine what was the right amount of power 
needed for security; and it was a strange kind of pacifism for it not only 
designed warring alliances but sometimes actually dictated wars. Kant's ironic 
comment that »ein daurender allgemeiner Friede, durch die so genannte 
Balance der Mächte in Europa ist, wie Swifts Haus, welches von einem 
Baumeister so vollkommen nach allen Gesetzen des Gleichgewichts erbauet 
war, daß, als sich ein Sperling drauf setzte, es sofort einfiel, ein bloßes 
Hirngespinst« ( W A XI , 172) is well known and could not be attributed to the 
fading attraction of the doctrine.58 The doctrine was one of international 
relations, not of international law, and lacked the voice of moral reason which 
was to be heard in the law of nations. 
There is a contradiction in the irenic tradition between this (ignoble, some 
would say, but realistic and modern) line of argument and the tendency to 
formulate (and impose) universalist solutions or models. This universalism 
originated in the tradition of empire and was incompatible with both 
monarchia universalis and sovereign states. In order to achieve peace, different 
arrangements of nation states were envisaged but in the last instance they were 
all subordinated to and dominated by an universal power. Ideally, peaceful 
settlement was a universal order, and a settlement could only be pacific if it 
aimed at universality. Moreover, it was the dissolution of the universal order, 
the decline and fall of the empire, which was believed to be the cause of wars. 
So the imagined peace establishments, as a rule, had a trait of restoration of 
imperium about them; the idea of peace was derived from the imperial idea. In 
this imperialism - materialized in European (and exceptionally more 
cosmopolitan) congresses, councils, diets, parliaments, courts, arbitrations and 
the like - lies the irenic ultimate rejection of sovereign states. 
The realization that, since Gentili »a succession of writers argued that the 
problem of war and peace between states could only be resolved by union, that 
is to say by some kind of federal or confederal arrangement, and not by mere 
58 . Jeremy Black, The Rise of the European Powers 1679-1793, Edward Arnold, London et al. 
1990, p. 162. 
Kant eirenikós: republicanism.. 133 
rules of coexistence,«.™ needed specification. Such peace bringing unions had 
the extinction of national independence for their purpose, and substance, and 
the thinking that invented them was either alien or hostile and opposed to the 
tradition of international law. It was not only anti-jurisprudential but also 
anti-internationalist because it was fundamentally anti-nationalist. In the ideal 
pacific world both nations and their relations would be abolished. Kant, as I 
have argued, cannot be assimilated to this tradition. This becomes even clearer 
when we take into account that European irenists not only advocated but 
often called for crusades or even organized them; elaborated daring schemes 
for European expansion and conquest; pushed for wars, even wars of 
extermination, and worked on war finances; hated the Turk and compared 
»savages« to wild beasts which are to be killed - if not for other reason, for 
sport. The main body of European irenism has not parted with war. It is not 
only that the ideal pacific commonwealths or empires do not lack militaristic 
features and military spirit. This «pacifism« was unequivocally opposed only 
and solely to wars in Europe: it wanted to terminate wars among Christians. It 
found only one way to free Europe from wars, and that was by exporting them 
to non-European territories, or at least to the margins of Europe. This irenism 
argued that Europe needed peace in order to be able to fight and conquer 
abroad, and war abroad was understood to be the guarantee of peace at home. 
Wars against or between Untermenschen were the price for European peace. 
Kant, as I hope I have indicated, differs from this irenism in all key points. 
The difference results from his resting the cause of international peace on a 
free federation of independent nations, sovereign states, and not on any kind 
of civitas maxima. Kant differs from irenism because he strictly defined the 
problem of international peace in terms of the law of nations. His 
jurisprudential framework also sets limits to the expectations that peace could 
be brought about by commerce or achieved through a universal republican 
settlement. On the one hand, it was clear to Kant that commercial innovations 
made it easier to wage war and that commercial nations, unbound in their 
action by jus gentium, were devastating non-European peoples and countries, 
and that the wars they had inflamed all over the world would ultimately affect 
Europe. On the other hand, a pacific order construed on the lines of classical 
republicanism would turn the world into one »great army in cantonments« and 
institute universal despotism.60 Kant did not offer any instant solution for the 
problems of war and peace nor did he elaborate a detailed scheme of a pacific 
59 . Murray Forsyth, »The Tradition of International Law«, in Nardin/Mapel, op. citv p. 29. 
60 . A model of an European peace settlement on republican principles was developed by 
Andrew Fletcher: An Account of a Conversation concerning a right Regulation of 
Governments for the Common Good of Mankind. In a Letter to the Marquis of Monstroe, 
the Earls of Rothes, Roxburg, and Hadington, from London the 1" of December, 1703, 
Edinburgh 1704, p. 66 sq. 
134 Tomaž Mastna k 
commonwealth. He, rather, defined the framework in which it is possible to 
think about war and the prospect for peace. He has left the prospect for peace 
open - all too many peace plans have closed this prospect down and, in the 
name of universal peace, sealed up a state of war.