Immanuel Kants View Of The Politics And Modernity Is Usually... Essay - 621 words

Immanuel Kants view of the politics and modernity is usually left unnoticed when scholars of different streams examine the works of this philosopher. However, Kant was the central figure of the Enlightenment period, whose works, upon closer investigation, can shed some light on the aforementioned concepts and their explanations as per the view of the philosopher. Two centuries ago the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his essay "Perpetual Peace" outlined the conditions of international and domestic politics that he believed would lead to the ever-widening pacification of international life. Kant's analysis is subtle and complex, but, simply stated, his conditions for successful politics of the state are three. The first and most important relates to the domestic political regimes of states: peaceful nations must be republics," by which Kant meant states in which citizens have rights and governments that depend on the consent of the governed. In republics, the public would oppose conflicts because they would not want to bear the cost of conflict resolution.


Kant's second condition focuses on economics: republics should have market economies aimed at improving citizens' well being. Then, given an international division of labor through free trade, economic interdependence will evolve. Benefiting from these arrangements, citizens will be more reluctant to break the ties of trade. In Kant's view, through commerce "a peaceful traffic among nations was established, and thus understanding, conventions, and peaceable relations were established among the most distant peoples." Although skeptics point to examples like World War I, which broke out despite unprecedented high levels of international commerce, recent scholarly studies find evidence to support Kant's view. Third, Kant argued that international peace required the emergence of a "pacific union" among republics. This would occur because republics would respect other republics and rely on principles of peaceful disput ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: immanuel kant, kant, modernity, kant's, political philosophy

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