meaning and force of Natural Right in the history of reasoning on politics. It was in keeping with the tenor of his own scheme of political thought that he should base his Plan of Perpetual Peace upon grounds of general utility, and should press its acceptance on the ground that it was in accord with the common sense of men regardful of their common interest.
Of Kant it has been said that in the department of Politics he did away with the narrowness that threatened it, and entered with his deep priestlike thought into the great spirit of history and the progress of the liberty of peoples.[1]
Kant's contribution to the cause of Perpetual Peace is measured not merely by his essay bearing that title but by essential parts of other works written by him on the Philosophy of Right and Politics. In the essay on Perpetual Peace the conclusions are more conspicuous than the reasoning; the articles are definite with a degree of sharpness that the preliminary conditions to be fulfilled do not warrant. In the case of Kant as in the case of Rousseau, the emphasis has been unduly laid on conclusions by those who cite him in their advocacy of a League of Nations and Perpetual Peace: too little heed has been given to the conditions that must, he said, first be satisfied. How the project is related as an ideal to facts and to the past in the present is best shown by Kant in his Theory of Right.[2] One of the short sections[3] of that work and the few concluding sentences express more clearly and in truer proportion than the earlier essay, Perpetual Peace, the judgement of Kant on the lasting establishment of Peace. If we take these together and combine them with his teaching in other essays on principles of Politics and the relation of theory to practice in Politics, we shall be able to see the character of Kant's contribution to the study of this subject, the place which he holds in its
- ↑ Rosenkranz, one of the editors of Kant's Works.
- ↑ Rechtslehre, 1796–7/
- ↑ § 61 of Part ii, treating of Public Right.
