On Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Draft

This is Volume XI in the Complete Works of Immanuel Kant published by LP.

Kant’s 1795 On Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Draft is one of his most well-known works written in his old age. Here Kant directly applies his Teleological Moral Philosophy he established across his life directly to the field of politics and International Relations. Due to the broken and inherited evil nature of man, peace is not natural and must be built through adherence to rational maxims at the individual, national and international levels. These binding international maxims have built the foundation of anti-Machiavellian Liberal Internationalism of today. On Perpetual Peace is one of the foundational philosophic works underlying the international world order and the charter of the United Nations. The League of Nations ( a phrase coined by Kant) was founded by Woodrow Wilson, who was a professor of Kantian philosophy, and explicitly used Kant's terminology "league of nations". This work was designed to be a template for future agreements between states, hence the reason it is written like a legal contract.