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Kant and the Kantian paradigm in international relations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Andrew Hurrell
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Extract

Although few in number and limited in scope, Kant's writings on international relations have had a lasting influence and have given rise to a wide range of interpretations. Kant's famous pamphlet, Perpetual Peace, has been seen as advocating federalism, world government, a League of Nations-type security system and outright pacifism. Underlying much of the debate on Kant lies a divergence over the relationship between what might broadly be called the ‘statist’ and the ‘cosmopolitan’ sides of Kant's writings. On one side, there are those who argue that Kant is primarily concerned with order at the level of interstate relations. Kant, it is argued, did not want to transcend the state system but to improve it. He wanted to subject the international anarchy to law and to find a solution to the problem of war but in a way which would not sacrifice the essential autonomy and independence of states.

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Type
Research Article
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Review of International Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , July 1990, pp. 183 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1990

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References

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6 Ibid. p. 21. Other writers who tend towards a more statist view of Kant, particularly on the limited nature of Kant's federations, include Clark, Ian, Reform and Resistance in the International Order (Cambridge, 1980)Google Scholar, ch. 2; Riley, Patrick, Kant's Political Philosophy (Totowa, NJ, 1983), especially pp. 118–119Google Scholar; and to a lesser extent, Williams, Howard, Kant's Political Philosophy (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar, especially ch. 10.

7 See Hedley Bull, ‘Society and Anarchy in International Relations’, in Butterfield, Herbert and Wight, Martin (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations (London, 1966)Google Scholar; Wight, Martin, ‘An Anatomy of International Thought,’ Review of International Studies 13, 3 (07 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bull, Hedley, ‘Martin Wight and the Theory of International Relations’, British Journal of International Studies 2, 2 (07 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society (London, 1979), pp. 25–26Google Scholar; and Brian Porter, ‘Patterns of Thought and Practice: Martin Wight's ‘international theory’ ‘ in Donelan, Michael (ed.), The Reason of States (London, 1978)Google Scholar. The universalist or cosmopolitan view of Kant is not of course limited to Bull and Wight. For a survey of earlier views of this kind, see Kinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, p. 374 and Gallie, , Philosophers of War and Peace, pp. 9 and 144Google Scholar. For a further interpretation along these lines which relates Kant to the broader tradition of cosmopolitanism in the eighteenth century, see Schlereth, Thomas, The Cosmopolitan Ideal in Enlightenment Thought (Notre Dame, 1977), pp. 124–125Google Scholar.

8 Bull, ‘Martin Wight and the Theory of International Relations’, p. 106.

9 Unpublished lecture notes on Kant which formed part of a series on ‘International Thinkers’.

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16 MM, Reiss, p. 165.

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31 IH, Reiss, p. 49.

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40 PP, Reiss, p. 94.

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45 IH, Reiss, p. 47.

46 IH, Reiss, p. 47.

47 IH, Reiss, p. 49.

48 IH, Reiss, p. 51.

49 TP, Reiss, p. 90.

50 TP, Reiss, p. 90.

51 TP, Reiss, p. 90.

52 TP, Reiss, p. 92.

53 MM, Reiss, p. 171.

54 IH, Reiss, p. 46.

55 PP, Reiss, p. 130.

56 PP, Reiss, p. 105.

57 PP, Reiss, pp. 102 and 104.

58 PP, Reiss, p. 113.

59 PP, Reiss, p. 104.

60 PP, Reiss, p. 129.

61 MM, Reiss, p. 165.

62 MM, Reiss, p. 171.

63 This takes Kant closer to Rousseau's view of the need for a confederation as the only way of safeguarding small and politically virtuous states against the vicissitudes of the international anarchy. See Stanley Hoffman, ‘Rosseau on War and Peace’, American Political Science Review 57, 2 (June 1963), pp. 327–31.

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70 Exactly how domestic reform is to be achieved remains a problem for Kant. This is due partly to his denial of the right of rebellion. It is also due to his belief that ‘the problem of establishing a perfect civil constitution is dependent [my emphasis] upon the problem of a law-governed relationship between states’. There is a chicken and egg dilemma here that Kant never fully resolves.

71 PP, Reiss, p. 94.

72 IH, Reiss, p. 48.

73 PP, Reiss, p. 104. There is a large literature dealing with the nature of Kant's republics. See especially Williams, Kant's Political Philosphy, chs. 5–8.

74 PP, Reiss, p. 100.

75 TP, Reiss, pp. 90–1.

76 TP, Reiss, p. 90.

77 See Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations (Chicago, 1976Google Scholar), II, pp. 462–3. See also pp. 338–9, 444–6 and 455–6.

78 PP, Reiss, 113.

79 Dick Howard, ‘Kanf s Political Theory: The Virtue of his Vices’, Review of Metaphysics 34 (December 1980), p. 346.

80 MM, Reiss, p. 174.

81 For a recent assessment of the impact of ethical constrants on international behaviour, see James Lee Ray, ‘The Abolition of Slavery and the End of International War’, International Organization 43, 3 (Summer 1989).

82 TP, Reiss, p. 92.

83 There is a large literature dealing with Kant's philosophy of history. See especially, Williams, Kant's Political Philosophy, ch. 1; G. A. Kelly, ‘Rousseau, Kant and History’, Journal of the History of Ideas 29 (1968); and E. L. Fackenheim, ‘Kant's Concept of History’, Kant-Studien 48 (1956–7).

84 IH, Reiss, p. 45.

85 IH, Reiss, p. 47.

86 For a detailed analysis of the realist critique of utopianism, see Clarke, Reform and Resistance, ch. 2.

87 Eternal Peace, in Friedrich, The Philosophy of Kant, p. 454.

88 PP, Reiss, p. 114.

89 IH, Reiss, p. 51.

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91 Principles of Political Right, quoted in Waltz, ‘Kant, Liberalism and War’, p. 334.

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94 Doyle, ‘Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs’. My interpretation differs from Doyle's in laying greater weight on Kant's belief in the moral improvement of individuals and on the specific role of various types of federations that Kant discusses.

95 TP, Reiss, p. 89. This brings out once more the primacy of moral considerations in Kant's view of international relations. As Pierre Hassner has said, Kant's political ideas were ‘une philosophic politique sans politique’. Pierre Hassner, ‘Les concepts de guerre et de paix chez Kant’, Revue Francaise de Science Politique 11 (September 1961), p. 642.

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99 PP, Reiss, p. 96.

100 Friedrich, Carl, Inevitable Peace (Cambridge, 1948), p. 178CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On this point, see Vincent, R. J., Non-intervention and International Order (Princeton, 1974), pp. 56–58.Google Scholar

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110 PP, Reiss, pp. 98–9.

111 MM, Reiss, p. 172.

112 PP, Reiss, p. 105.

113 MM, Reiss, p. 172.

114 Let us add finally that, though the advantages resulting to commerce from a great and lasting peace are in themselves certain and indisputable, still, being common to all States, they will be appreciated by none. For such advantages make themselves felt only by contrast, and he who wishes to increase his relative power is bound to seek only such gains as are exclusive’, Rousseau, Judgement on Saint-Pierre's Project for Perpetual Peace, in Forsyth, M.et al. (ed.), The Theory of International Relations. Selected Texts (London, 1970), p. 160.Google Scholar

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116 PP, Reiss, pp. 107–8.

117 IH, Reiss, p. 51.

118 An interesting indication of the reemergence of Kantian perspectives can be seen in the following quotation by the Soviet philosopher lu. A. Zomoshkin: ‘This ideal [general disarmament] is expressed as a moral law, a categorical imperative in the sense of the term used by I. Kant, whose profound reflections upon the role of the ideal have become especially precious in our time. It is an imperative which emerges as the voice of duty and conscience, as a moral-legal ‘maxim’ possessing general, universal significance’, In A. Zamoshkin, ‘Ideal iadernogo razruzheniia i problema ego realizatsii (filosofskie i psikhologicheskie aspekty’, [The ideal of nuclear disarmament and the problem of its realization—philosophical and psychological aspects], Voprosy Filosofii 1 (1988), p. 90.