Kant's "To Perpetual Peace"

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

The selection this month, "To Perpetual Peace," by Kant, was first published in the year (1795) of the Treaty of Basel, which ended hostilities between France and her combatants of the so-called First Coalition (Prussia, Spain, and Hesse-Kassel).

Historian David A. Bell reflects in his book The First Total War that "To Perpetual Peace" was a product of an era when the so-called "Enlightenment thinkers," including the giant among them Kant, "began to argue that permanent warfare might not, in fact, be the permanent fate of mankind,"

Napoleon Bonaparte was about to bestride the scene in revolutionary France, however, and a new round of wars followed.  More on Monday night...

First edition of "To Perpetual Peace," published in 1795 in Kant's hometown of Königsberg, in Prussia.